Increase in Commercial Television Puppetry

D'Snowth

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Band-aid has a new commercial out with an entire cast of bright, colorful puppets singing a new jingle for the product (not the usual "I'm stuck on Band-aid brand, and Band-aid's stuck on me").

The puppets are quite excellent looking, in both design and construction, but the commercial seems to exploit the fact that they are puppets: arms up the puppets are briefly visible, and the arm rods are extremely thick and really stand out.
 

beakerboy12

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Band-aid has a new commercial out with an entire cast of bright, colorful puppets singing a new jingle for the product (not the usual "I'm stuck on Band-aid brand, and Band-aid's stuck on me").

The puppets are quite excellent looking, in both design and construction, but the commercial seems to exploit the fact that they are puppets: arms up the puppets are briefly visible, and the arm rods are extremely thick and really stand out.
I saw that too! I definetely love the commercial! I can thimk puppets in commercials might not be a thing of the past!
 

dmoss

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Guys, it's driving me nuts...what is the song they're parodying? It's an 80's tune, but I can't think of it. Something about the "In-side-out" part of the sing makes me think back really hard to my early childhood...very eighties-esque...
 

D'Snowth

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Has anyone seen the latest Android commercial? Where that guy can't afford a real mobile phone WITHOUT a contract, and relies on a child-like toy phone, and everywhere he goes, from the moment he gets up in the morning, to going out and doing business, he's accompanied by a chorus of puppets? And they're really great quality puppets as well, they look like the workof Rick Lyon, but I wouldn't swear to it.
 

D'Snowth

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Well, it looks as if we've got a casualty already: the CarFax Fox puppet has been replaced with, SHOCKER, CGI...
 

robodog

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And the CGI Car Fox looks like crap compared to the puppet version.
 

mupcollector1

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Just curious, how does one go about creativing creator driven puppet commercials kind of like what Jim did in the 50s - 60s and even Ed May. He used to have a website called whattacharacter.com but it looks like it's no longer there anymore. He was famous for TNN's Inside Outdoors and DC Follies. He had these foam puppets and he would do these sort slapsticky commercials. I'd totally would like to do something like that whenever I find a cool opertunaty. But what's crazy about the media industry is you need an agent and before that you need a referral and before that you...and it goes on and on like this, it goes around in a circle, it's all blocked off, it's just in the matter of breaking into the industry somehow.
 

KremlingWhatnot

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Does That Imaginary Friends Car Commerical Count, Cause I Just Got Done Watching It On Youtube, And Looked A Lot Like Puppetry, Anyways, Here It Is
That Turtle Looks Similar To A Certain Frog We All Know In Love :smile:
 

mupcollector1

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Does That Imaginary Friends Car Commerical Count, Cause I Just Got Done Watching It On Youtube, And Looked A Lot Like Puppetry, Anyways, Here It Is
That Turtle Looks Similar To A Certain Frog We All Know In Love :smile:
It looks like a rip off of Baby Kermit of Muppet Babies.

I was going to mention Clyde Frog from South Park then I discovered this 1970s "The Clyde Frog Show". And I thought The Letter People (tv show that was kind of a Sesame Street rip-off) and Le Bebete Show from France was the earliest Muppet rip-offs.

Anyway to back to the original subject, has anyone seen this really bad internet dating site commercial with this heart puppet? I personally think that it was quite amateur. The puppet and the puppeteer, especially the rods obviously being too thick and too highlighted towards the camera. When I was working out at Planet Fitness, There was this TV show on one of the HDTVs on the screen (not a commercial but I want to make this point) It's on channel E or MTV, it's youtube videos kind of like a cross between current America's Funniest Home Videos and Tosh.O of people falling down and getting hurt. Then there's this guy and this badly made sock puppet with yet another non-professional puppeteer and they laugh and shout "FAIL!". It's like the art of puppetry isn't being taken seriously as an art now a days and animation is slowly going towards that with Flash animation. I was pretty ticked off and left the gym early that night because that was just too disturbing. Wonder Showzen was sort of like that in a way but it was well written in a dark humor / satirical sort of way my opinion. But today it's...it's just basically what the mainstream thinks sells. It's like everyone talks like they are in high school, trend followers, current slang, music, UGH! I can just ramble and rant all about my dislike for current media but I'll just leave it at that.

Also I just want to point out that I don't have anything against puppets and puppeteers that aren't as professional let's just say. I mean everyone starts from somewhere, we make our mistakes and we practice. But in mainstream, amateur stuff just doesn't look right to me. Puppetry, animation, everything. I feel it's talent the mainstream lacks. Again, just my opinion.
 
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