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This may be the most crazed YouTube ad you've seen all year

Technically Incorrect: For reasons best known to itself, Old Spice decides to out-bizarre itself. And, indeed, the whole Web.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.


Please don't ask me what this is all about.
Enlarge Image
Please don't ask me what this is all about.

Please don't ask me what this is all about.

Old Spice; YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

If you're selling vaguely masculine smells to recently pubescent boys, it's best to move them in unexpected ways.

These boys, after all, aren't consistent creatures. They sleep until noon. They have mood swings. They need constant excitement.

Old Spice has long been known to cast ads to the Web that veer from the bizarre to the plain insane. Who could forget the moms who stalk their sons because they just can't let them go?

Its latest is -- well, it's hard to complete this sentence.

There are birds wearing gold chains. There's a woman having ketchup squirted on her face. There's a bear that vomits a TV. There's a clown who lives beneath a tree. There's a bikini-clad woman who lives beneath the clown.

All these qualify under the category Sentences I Never Thought I'd Write.


So please enjoy this complete madness.

I feel sure that once you get to the bear trying to break the land-speed record in a hot dog, you'll be mopping your forehead or scratching several parts of yourself involuntarily.

Old Spice's explanation on YouTube will surely help your comprehension: "Sometimes when two commercials love each other very much, they get together and spawn a radioactive garbage fire that spews flaming jellied gasoline everywhere and kills all the grass in your yard."

The company adds: "Long story short, you have about 30 minutes to watch this video before we have to bury it deep in the Earth's core for humanity's well-being."

I worry, though, for the well-being of Old Spice. I worry that even madness has its limits.

Though this ad has been on YouTube for a week now, it's enjoyed only around 185,000 views.

Perhaps the presidential campaign makes everything seem sane.