Transform your drab life with special Sony Ericsson headphones

When a creepy, talkative person sits next to you on public transit, a pair of headphones can make all the difference. This is especially true in the new spot above for Sony Ericsson motion-activated headphones. A dopey-looking cartoon man walks barefoot onto a bus (I guess he's never heard of tetanus). He is the only splash of color in a gray world. He puts in his headphones, which make a terrible slurping sound like he hasn't cleaned his ears in years. Trippy music plays, and the bus is transformed into a wildly colored universe, where the back door is a giant mouth with a tongue hanging out like a red carpet. The best part: The chatty lumberjack/possible serial killer sitting next to the guy becomes a dancing bunny. Maybe whoever filmed this should stop dropping acid. Then again, maybe not.

—Posted by Elana Glowatz

Steve Nash and 50 Cent get you to make your own Vitaminwater

Add one part gruff-voiced spokesman and two parts too-soon Billy Mays parody, blend until frothy, and you've got this spoof infomercial for Vitaminwater. If you have trouble taking vitamins the old-fashioned way, "Canadian celebrity Steve Nash" and his gravely voice want you to know there's hope. This mildly amusing spot is for the drink's "flavorcreator" Facebook application, which you can use to design your own variety of Vitaminwater. To promote the app, the company goes so far as to give a cameo to Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, who designed his own flavor a while back. Throughout his 20 seconds on camera, he delivers countless gems such as, "I mean, I'm so paid, man." The funniest part of this ad is undoubtedly the actors' facial expressions. If Vitaminwater could bottle them, it could finally make a good flavor without the help of its customers.

—Posted by Elana Glowatz

Windows 7 spot shows off kindergartener's mad slideshow skills

Tying your shoes is not a prerequisite for making an awesome slideshow. In this commercial for Windows 7, by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, a little girl named Kylie finds "happy words" on her dad's computer, all of which praise the new Microsoft operating system. So, like any normal kindergartener, she decides to match them with pictures of a piglet wearing bunny ears and a cat swimming in marshmallows. Then she sets everything to a pumping glam-rock hit. The resulting slideshow is pretty impressive, considering many adults with years more technological experience can't even figure out what PowerPoint does, let alone how to use it. The ad, part of Microsoft's "Good News" campaign, tips off viewers to the late-October release of the new operating system. This half-minute spot is pretty cute, but "The Final Countdown" is too overplayed to be enjoyable. Sometimes what happens in the '80s should stay in the '80s.

—Posted by Elana Glowatz

Six artists whip up some crazy-ass Mountain Dew bottle designs

Angry monkeys. Crazy eyes. Enormous octopi. Exactly the sort of imagery you want next to your mouth when you drink a soda. In early September, Mountain Dew will launch its third Green Label Art series, which consists of collectible aluminum soda bottles featuring designs by six contemporary artists. Each graphic is vastly different from the others, both in style and theme. One of the artists, Stephen Bliss, drew a gigantic octopus seizing a ship from the pirate era (the one before 2009). The olive-green water in the drawing looks almost as filthy as the Hudson River, which doesn't exactly give the consumer a good impression of what she's drinking. Claw Money, the first female artist of the series, drew her signature three-clawed paw with arrows winding around the bottle. While they are certainly interesting, there's really no connection between any of the six designs and Mountain Dew. Maybe the artists should have tasted the soda before setting up their easels. UPDATE: A rep for the brand wants to clarify that each of the designs was directly inspired by Mountain Dew. For example, here's Stephen Bliss talking about his octopus bottle: "I imagined there to be a world inside every bottle of Mountain Dew—an adventure—a huge ocean of Dew with sea creatures. The scene is frozen, on the brink of chaos; the ship is about to be pulled under the ocean and the volcano will erupt. The birds are scattering in anticipation. There's a different adventure in every bottle." See, the connection is obvious!

—Posted by Elana Glowatz

If you want eyes on your butt, pick up some Winkers pants today

In this amateurish video for so-called "Winkers" pants, people walk for ridiculously long periods of time in front of a camera so the viewer can see the designs on their pants "wink." As the models move (to what sounds like the soundtrack from an '80s exercise video set in space), the fabric underneath their butt cheeks wrinkles and expands. This creates the illusion that painted-on eyes, or other well-placed images, are moving. Winkers come in five styles, ranging from what look like the majestic peepers of a genie to a couple of talkative ducks. My favorite: a Hollywood clapperboard with the word "Action" at the crease, mostly because it's begging for a crass joke. You can even order your own design, although "not all requests can be accommodated," according to the Web site. The video clocks in at over three and a half minutes, more than long enough to burn the images into my memory forever. I'll be seeing that brown owl in my nightmares.

—Posted by Elana Glowatz

Dr. Andrew Weil has an osteoporotic bone to pick with Sally Field

You like me. You really ... oh, you don't? Sorry, Sally Field, but Dr. Andrew Weil really doesn't like you. In his latest missive for The Huffington Post, titled "Should You Get Your Drug Information From An Actor?," the advocate of integrative medicine criticizes Field's involvement in direct-to-consumer ads for Boniva, an osteoporosis drug from GlaxoSmithKline and Roche Laboratories. That launches him to the rest of the piece, which protests DTC marketing for pharmaceuticals in general. But the mere mention of the actress was enough to incite some funny comments from readers, whose defense of Field is disproportionate to her word count. "Sure, why not?" one commenter writes as an answer to the article's title. "She had me believing that nuns can surf then fly and also go on strike. Now I believe whatever she tells me about Boniva and the bones and good stuff like that." There aren't any direct attacks against other people in Weil's previous HuffPo articles, so perhaps Field just caught him at a bad time. But a doctor who looks like Santa Claus versus the actress who played Sybil, a woman with multiple personalities? I would pay to see the cage fight.

—Posted by Elana Glowatz

Gold'n Plump customers speaking out on a soapbox made of hay

The girl next door has feathers and a beak. This new campaign for Gold'n Plump chicken, by GdB in Minneapolis, implores Midwesterners to support poultry raised in Minnesota and Wisconsin and speak up about the importance of buying local. In the TV spot, called "Get Vocal About Local," a number of people step onto a bale of hay, instead of a soapbox, and give their reasons for supporting their friendly neighborhood chicken. The placements of the bale get more precarious as the ad progresses, moving from a sidewalk and a supermarket to a rocking boat and a construction site. At the end of the spot, a girl in ice skates and hockey gear stands on the bale in the middle of a rink where other children are playing. People on the coasts may not be able to buy Gold'n Plump chicken locally, but we can admire the sense of adventure it gives to its eaters.

—Posted by Elana Glowatz

French's Mustard Man gets ready for taste of life in the Midwest

Mustard Man is finally moving out of his parents' house. The French's mascot, born in Rochester, New York, and most recently living in Parsippany, N.J., has found a new home (and freedom from all that nagging) at the upcoming Advertising Icon Museum in Kansas City, Mo., which is slated to open in 2010. According to Amy Stern, a spokesperson for French's, the condiment manufacturer (with the help of art studio LifeFormations in Bowling Green, Ohio) created a sculpture of Mustard Man to be shipped to the museum because there weren't any extra soft-form suits to spare. The replica of the mascot was then brought next door for some model shots at Keith Meiser Photography. The images nicely capture Mustard Man's classic emotions: mildly interested, harrumph and yellow. Kansas City hot dogs better gird their buns in preparation for his arrival. Ketchup, watch out. Your days are numbered.

—Posted by Elana Glowatz

Sony's social-media addicts suffer (and cause) psychic distress

Another rehab for Amy Winehouse to avoid. In this pointlessly long ad for the Sony Vaio W Series notebook, members of the Social Media Addicts Association meet in a gymnasium to share stories about hitting rock bottom and fighting the temptation of Facebook, Twitter, etc. Don't worry, it's no tear-jerker. It's also not much of a laugh-jerker, even with a supporting Web site dedicated to the fake AA-style group. When the new Vaio is finally introduced at the end of the spot (if you stuck around that long), the copy says the computer is "Not approved by S.M.A.A.," presumably because it's a good vehicle to enable such a severe affliction. Two and a half minutes for that? I wish I'd spent my time Tweeting.

—Posted by Elana Glowatz

Summit Brewing wants to hear your rambling, drunken questions

A drunk's musings might be more valid than you might think. In its newest campaign from GdB in Minneapolis, Summit Brewing invites beer drinkers to "Get to the bottom of it"—that is, the bottom of their pint glasses and also questions about "life, the universe and everything in between." The campaign includes print, outdoor, radio and online ads, and poses questions such as, "Does belching impact the ozone?" It also calls on lushes to join the debate and offer up mind-boggling questions of their own. Each month, one fan entry will be showcased on a billboard in downtown Minneapolis and online. Seeing your enormous face displayed on an outdoor ad should help your pickled, hung-over brain slowly piece together the events of the night before.

—Posted by Elana Glowatz