Possumblog

Speaking of big ugly animals...

Got another commercial that gives me the heeby-jeebies. It's for Express Oil Change, a regional quick-oil-change outfit. They're good folks--we usually take our cars there, and it's generally pleasant. (They used to be more conscientious, though.) Anyway, they generally have pretty innocuous commercials. For a while there, former Miss Alabama and Miss America Heather Whitestone was a spokesqueen for them, although I never quite understood why. But, she's pretty, so who cares.

But here lately, there's something else ENTIRELY.

A rat.

Not a little rat, like Stewart Little, but a gigantic, the-size-of-a-small-child white rat. Comes tooling down the road hanging his head out the driver's window of a full-size car, pulls into the Express Oil Change, drives into the bay, nods pleasantly to the attendant, hops out dressed in a red sweater and khakis, looks carefully at oil being drained, is a big helper and hands a guy a wrench, nods and agrees some more with another guy. And the entire time, not a single person seems to have a moment where he says to himself, "HOLY MOTHER OF EARL, IT'S A GIANT WHITE RAT DRIVING A CAR!"

I mean, such things around here are USUALLY enough to get the offending rodent beaten to death with a shovel or a bad case of lead poisoning from the wrong end of a 12 gauge, but all the oil change guys are just blithely acquiescing to the demands of their giant rodent overlord.

And I just have to ask myself, "HuhWHAT?!"

It's a puppet rat, and not a particularly cute one like Stewart Little (it actually looks more like a possum--which might have some ironic appeal since possums are usually the ones on the bad end of anything dealing with cars), and he's not handled particularly well by the puppeteers or production company or whoever, and he doesn't talk in a cute cartoon voice like a Muppet--he's just a big derned mute rat.

Why?

What does this say about Express Oil Change?

That regular car maintenance will turn you into a yellow-toothed plague-carrier? Is it supposed to be a sly pop-culture reference to the late Ed"Big Daddy" Roth's immortal "Rat Fink" character?

Or is there someone so smart out there they've managed to hoodwink a client with some storyboard idea about a furry fun character--you know, like Mickey Mouse--who can drive--you know, like Fozzy Bear, or that cute gecko--and he has to get his oil changed, because that's what oil change places do, and, and...

Boy, it's a stupid commercial.

And darned disturbing at 5 a.m.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at May 10, 2005 01:04 PM