I have a superpower. When a commercial break interrupts a television program I’m watching, I can disappear completely into my head for the duration of the commercial break. I don’t need the commercial skip on my Tivo because I’ve trained myself to skip them. That’s one of the reasons I was surprised when my wife pointed out to me something very interesting about an ad for the Chrysler Town and Country minivan that I’m sure must’ve passed before my eyes hundreds of times without any notice. The ad depicts a young boy being challenged to a race home from school by some of his classmates. Once he makes it to his mom’s minivan, he taunts his friends as his mom pulls away. Check it out.
All fun and games, right?
Well, if you watch the ad without audio, it become another ad, entirely. It then becomes an ad about a poor kid being picked on by bullies at school. They wait for him after school’s out and chase him all the way to his house, where the mama’s boy leaps into the safety of his mom’s minivan and rolls away, taunting his tormentors. I’ve added a little different music to the commercial to better underscore the point.
Poor kid!
The best part is once you’ve had the benefit of watching it this way, it becomes obvious how tacked on the kid’s voice-over is in the official commercial. That leads me to wonder what the commercial was originally like. I imagine the tagline was “Chrysler Town and Country. The next best thing to returning to the womb.”