Christmas is nearly here, with the effect that if you like to relax by watching television that is aimed at children — e.g. the WWE; yes I know I’m sad — the ad–breaks are overloaded with cheap and tacky commercials for cheap and tacky toys that children can witter their parents for. Toy adverts are among the most irritating and crap on TV (advertising people would at this point run the “you’re not the target audience argument” — i.e there’s a reason why lager commercials seem much better — bollocks to that; lager commercials clearly are much better). Particular lowlights include:

• that Harry Potter whomping willow commercial, where the English public school vibe is built upon throughout, with a Dumbledore–esque voiceover, to be completely spoiled at the end when an American brat who looks like he has parachuted in from a 1950s toothpaste commercial cries “I warrrnn!”;
  
  
• the Bob the Builder workbench one with the irrelevant “drrr nrrrr nrrr neeeeeeerrrrrr” A–Team theme music riff at the end; and
  
  
• the Toy Master poem one, which sounds like it is being read by Brian Blessed, but reading a script whose author must have been unaware that “taster” does not rhyme with “Toymaster” and elsewhere resorted to made–up words such as “musthavity” (n. thing that one must have) to rhyme with “defy gravity”.

The one benefit of having this last ad with Blessed’s Shakespearean intonation is that I just realised that it’s Scay-elex-trick, not Scay-electrics as I thought for the last 15 years. Being thankful for other small blessings, I haven’t yet seen the hardy perennial “Rummikub” ad. I get the impression that the factory made twenty of these in 1980 and they’ve been trying to flog them off every Christmas since; truly the Ferrero Rocher of the toy industry.

Later:

Apparently, Rummikub is incredibly popular, selling 6 million sets per year. There’s obviously an underclass of people who sit around at Christmas playing it and eating Ferrero Rocher. Good luck to ’em I say. I’m writing to Father Christmas for that “I’m hungry for Hot Wheels” cyborg thing. Or a Scay-elex-trick.