TVSquad

Snuggie. For. Dogs. I really feel like anything I write after that is just superfluous. So, yes, everybody has written about the Snuggie, ha ha ha. America is fat and lazy and will soon be taken over by the far more efficient Chinese.

But these are all known facts. Ever since Ronald Reagan declared ketchup as a vegetable, the cat's kind of been out of the bag on the whole "America is fat" tip. So when I saw the ad for the Snuggie, my reaction was simply, "meh." Actually, that's a lie. My reaction was, "Dude. That's awesome. Blankets 24/7!" But after I sobered up, it went back to, "meh."

Picture it: An ad airs on television with a nice, middle-class woman grocery shopping with her young daughter. The woman's arm is in a sling, and a concerned older lady asks her what happened. "Oh, rollerblading," the woman replies. The butcher inquires if it was a skiing accident. "Um, mountain biking," is the quick and uncomfortable correction. The kid stocking the shelves asks the same question and gets yet another answer.

The woman continues to shop, and bumps her cart into another woman's. This woman, too, has a sling on her arm. They look at each other. They have a moment of realization. They are abused wives, going about their daily business and being forced to lie about how they sustained their injuries, and now they are being confronted with their own deception and excuses. It's a haunting public service announcement about domestic violence -- except it totally isn't.

Because it's an ad for EFFING BATHROOM CLEANER.

How much would you spend for a 30 second commercial on Grey's Anatomy? It's the most expensive TV show to advertise on, according to Ad Age magazine. It costs $419,000 for a half minute.

In second place is Sunday Night Football, which costs $358,000, and then The Simpsons, which is a cool $315,000. Rounding out the top 10 are Heroes ($296,000), Desperate Housewives ($270,000), CSI ($248,000), Two and a Half Men ($231,000), Survivor and Private Practice (tied at $208,000 each), and then Prison Break ($200,000).

1. Raisin Bran Crunch: The long running series of ads where an office worker named Smith tries to get Johnson (who just always chomps on cereal) fired, and all of his efforts backfire. This could be a really cool series like The Office or Newsradio. Johnson could spend the entire series saying nothing at all, but he keeps rising up the corporate ladder until he's President of the company, and viewers across the country would be waiting to see what his first words would be.

What's the worst ad song ever? The song might not be bad itself, but it just doesn't go with the idea of the commercial or the product being pitched. Slate magazine asked readers to send in their nominees. There are some great choices: the use of Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz" to sell Mercedes Benz cars; Kahlua and Pepsi using "Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones; Sheryl Crow's "Soak Up The Sun" to sell Best Buy products (with it's lines about "I don't have digital" and "It's not having what want"); KFC using "Sweet Home Alabama;" Ortho-Evra using "There She Goes," a song about heroin addiction, in their ads for birth control. So many stupid ads, so little time. 

The winner? Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, using Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life," another song about heroin addiction, in their ads for cruise ship vacations.