I call BS on the DS
If it’s cricket season, it must also be the season of annoying ads repeated at the end of every second over. KFC is usually responsible for the most grating of these, but there’s been enough written and said about their most recent PR debacle1.
No, the ad that’s annoying me most this season is the one for Nintendo DS. You’ve seen it: a gormless youth spends his summer playing with his hand-held game. His mother looks a tad concerned – shouldn’t he be out enjoying his youth instead of shut indoors with an electronic game? – but, whatcha gonna do? He’s a teenager.
And it’s just as well she doesn’t interfere with his obsessive gameplay because in the last scene of the ad we see her, pencil in hand and brow furrowed, trying to nut out a problem with what looks like a supermarket receipt. Son happens along, glances at the receipt and says, immediately, “they’ve overcharged you $20!”. Mother looks fondly at him and realises that the DS maths game he’s been playing has sharpened his mind.
Now, seriously. If a shop overcharges you they don’t record that on the receipt, do they? Or are we to believe that there was a serious glitch in the computer system which rounded up each item on the bill to a total of exactly $20 overcharged, and this boy genius – thanks to his DS brain workouts – was able to mentally tot that up in a couple of seconds?
Anybody who sees this ad, buys the idea that it promotes cognitive clarity and therefore gets one for themselves or their offspring needs to be removed from the gene pool. Otherwise the coming generations are all going to be as smart as Olivia Newton John.
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1. Although I’d love to see the reaction if our American friends caught a glimpse of last year’s ads. You remember them – shots of players in their garish 20-20 getup with “humourous” voiceovers implying that… EVEN ON THE CRICKET FIELD THESE GUYS COULDN’T GET ENOUGH FRIED CHICKEN! That wasn’t the point of the controversy, though, I hear you say. Well, it might have been, if they’d got a look at this:
So, Ricky Ponting’s just assuming that Andrew Symonds wants KFC because he’s black? Or, worse, an American audience might think he’s a white guy done up like an olde timey minstrel. Pass me my smelling salts.
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During the process of buying a new television, many of the manufacturers were throwing in game consoles to sweeten the deal. My other half suggested that getting a console might be a good thing because we could then buy some educational games for our kids. On the surface, this is fine in theory, and I’m sure that there might be some edcuational benefit in these kids games. But I pointed out that they key benefit was to the manufacturers in that by getting kids into playing video games as early as possible increases the chance that the kid will turn into a lifelong video game player. I’d rather keep our kids away from the Playstations and Wiis for as long as possible, and get them making mudcakes in the garden instead.
Daniel – I must confess we have a Wii, and my daughter maybe plays it once a fortnight. The wii sports baseball/tennis have improved her co-ordination. But then again her co-ordination would probably improve if I threw the ball to her daily…
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My son unfortunately is addicted to the electronic games so if anyone can suggest a way of UN-welding him from it I would be gratedul. Anyhoo if he ends up as intelligent as Olly Neutron-Bomb I think I might rope myself.
I think Ricky Ponting’s assumptions after his last effort require some explaining, perhaps he’s been dating Olly N-B