Nuts and Gum: July 2005

You’ve watched ‘24’-Now eat the energy bar.

I always admire good marketing and one of the better efforts I’ve seen lately is a Japanese campaign using the TV show ‘24’ and the Japanese energy/meal replacement product called ‘Calorie Mate’. While I’ve actually never tired it myself, Calorie Mate is fairly popular product in Japan. Calorie Mate is one of those products that English speakers tend to notice in while in Japan because the front packaging is all in English, including the appetizing combination of the words ‘balanced food’ and ‘block’ and then the list of ingredients in small font underneath.

The product fits the character (Jack Bauer doesn’t get the chance to eat much during his busy day but needs energy to keep going) although I don’t know if the over the top nature of the character fits the product (I was impressed by this season’s transformation of Jack from a flawed hero into a no nonsense thug with no problems of beating or shooting people in order to fulfill his stated mission…At this rate, I suspect that by season six, Jack will be a part of a secret government sanctioned death squad and will be wearing a necklace of human ears…I’m not a big fan of the show but I admire that the writers create story lines and characters beyond the hackneyed ones we’ve all seen a dozens times before on TV…but I think they use the 'cell-phone-call-plot-advancement-writing-crutch' way, way too much). And I think this subway ad sums up the show in one image…a pissed off guy yelling into a cell phone.

The second TV commercial also does a nice case of summing up the Jack’s typical dialogue, yelling into a cell phone “YES!”, “NO!”,”MOVE! and it is funny to see Jack being stymied by a subway car full of J school girls.

Calorie Mate/24 web campaign with TV commercials

Mugging: The new Olympic sport

It would seem that someone in Australia just to a bit lazy in their google image searching (or felt like having some fun). A spoofed image of NYC’s 2012 Olympics bid was used on Australian TV news program a few weeks back. Instead of using this official image,

This spoofed image was used

As you can see here

Orginial Spoofed NYC 2012 image story

Gothamist story on Australian news show using spoofed image
See the video here (and this site is run by the same Austrialian broadcaster that made the mistake)

How'd jou like that, Eh? / First, you get the money...then you get the power...then you get the women

I’ve always been a bit mystified by the ongoing and apparently everlasting appeal of the movie Scarface. Sure, it is a massively over the top film that is extremely entertaining for its bad accents and hilarious/horrendous dialogue. And I can see the machismo/underdog appeal of Tony’s ‘I take what I want’ mentality and his “All I got in my life is my balls and my word, and I don't break them for no one” sense of honor. But it really isn’t that good a film, period. I had heard various references to Tony in various rap songs but I really didn't pickup on the underclass appeal of Tony Montana. It became much more clear for me when I watched the recent 20th anniversary DVD of Scarface, which had a 30 minute documentary talking to various hip hop stars and what Scarface meant to them. P Diddy basically says he based his life on this movie and has watched it at least 30 times. While it was amusing to see these guys take this so seriously, it wasn’t quite as funny as another piece on the DVD about creative dubbing (In the original film, about every fifth word was a swear or sexual reference) they had to do in order to show it on broadcast TV...'How'd you get that scar, tough guy...Eatin' pineapple?'.

Anyway, there is a very large mall in the middle of the state that I visit once or twice a year, usually to go see a movie (they have a very large and fancy theater set up). I personally find the mall rather depressing, since its utter massiveness and crassness always leads me to wonder about the state of the country. But for the last several years, I’ve also been impressed by the amount of Scarface related goods being sold there. At first it was just the typical posters/t-shirt crap that you would expect to find there. But the last time I went, I noticed actual Scarface based artwork…framed pieces of drawn or painted artwork depicting scenes from the movie. I thought this was an odd product and wondered who would buy such things. I then started to think about the global supply lines that feed this mall and started to wonder if there were how many artisans in the Philippines or El Salvador were working hard to producing skillful conte crayon visions of Tony Montana.

I started to do a little looking around on the web and I found these items working the Scarface mystique. The first one is the best….I think I should get one of these to wear on my next job interview.

And the ladies aren't left out either

Ok folks, this is going too far...we don't need a Scarface router (it is a joke)

Masamania on the Decorer Style

Masamania is another interesting Japanese website. Masa, a Japanese national, takes a lot of photographs of various aspects of Japan and mixes it with impassioned opinions of his views of life in Japan. His English isn’t perfect but his passion shines through. One of self professed goals is to show the Japan that world doesn't see on a regular basis...drunk business people in street, homeless people, police speed traps. Not always a work safe site (but all the links below are), but always a good read. This piece isn’t very hard hitting but he does have lots of interesting pictures of a new fashion trend that is probably already mutating into something else in the streets of Harajuku.
Masamania on Decorer style

Some other interesting Masamania pieces
Masa on Motorcycle Santa gang in Shibuya (these are really good and Christmas isn’t a holiday in Japan)

Masa on hardworking Japanese businessmen (pics of people asleep on trains and drunk in the street)

Postsecret

PostSecret
An interesting site where people mail in a secret on postcard…while some are probably sent in for effect (I remember when one of my college friends mailed in a letter to the mini-page (the kids page in the comic section of the Sunday paper) in the writing style of 6 year old that was printed……’my sister takes almost all of the blanket every night. I think she’s mean!’ was the way it went, if I remember correctly) but some of the postsecret items do not seem faked.