Worst In-Game Commercials 2018

Admit it: even as an ardent Padres fan, you can’t always hustle on down to Petco Park to catch the ol’ ballsquad. Sometimes you gotta settle for the comfy confines of the living room couch and you get to enjoy the game alongside the entertaining duo of Don Orsillo and Mark Grant. All good, right?

Wrong.

In between game action you get the usual spattering of commercials. Jingles, gimmicks, all that. But most of the time...you get the same commercials. Over. And. Over. Again. Maton gets us out of the inning and OH GREAT, HERE’S AN ANTHROPOMORPHIC PILE OF SNACK FOOD AGAIN. THERE’S A PLACE WHERE ALL PETS FLOURISH. DUN DUN DUN DAAAAA DUN.

Let’s face it, FSSD plays the same commercials over and over and over again during broadcasts. I know the reason why; they’re probably the only advertisers who bought time during Padres games. That’s fine...BUT DOES IT NEED TO BE THE SAME AD OVER AND OVER AGAIN!?

Here are the top culprits:

AMPM Toomgis

� GC Images

The giant anthropomorphic pile of food and his antics inside an AMPM occur all too often for my taste. Whether being ogled after offering a strand of his hair as a licorice straw or finding out his name is a literal acronym for Too Much Good Stuff (really prime writing there), the behemoth snack man rips a page from the millennial Tim & Eric “Anything really odd and discomforting will totally be funny” book and runs with it to no real reward for the viewer. A fountain drink race that leads to a man pouring the drink down his pants? “HA! Toomgis don’t wear pants!” Character development at its best. Toomgis giving a lady his digits in coffee foam and she immediately asks if he wants kids? Yikes.

What the commercials fail to tell you in any meaningful way are the other offerings in the store, like the solid pre-cooked selections in the hot case. The rib sandwiches, jumbo hot dogs, and chicken sandwiches aren’t half bad in a lunchtime pinch. My local AMPM also carries various craft beers, which ain’t too shabby when I can’t hustle down to my regular spot. It’s a shame, really. Older AMPM fare used to be relatively funny, or at least...get me to chuckle instead of recoil.

Petco

Before you get all indignant on me, I love pets. Got a few of them doggos myself. But maaaaan has this jingle drilled into my cerebral cortex WHERE ANTIOXIDANTS AND OMEGA-3s ABOOOUUUNND.

I can only take so much of the awesome haircut. I don’t want to keep staring at the spherical haircut. I don’t care that it’s so wonderfully perfectly magically rooooound.

And what of the dog that now looks like a martini? I’ve never had an easy time at the vet, that’s an outright lie and my Boston Terrier can tell you all about that. And now his voice is loud? Why, exactly? That’s great that the Escondido Petco offers vet services. But I don’t need the ballpark’s namesake drilling this jingle into my skull every half inning. It almost makes me want to frequent Petsmart (who’s commercial is far superior and FEATURES A BOSTON TERRIER I AM SOLD).

Carl’s Jr.

Matthew McConaughey has a commercial history. Whether he’s shucking bourbon or telling me to drive a Lincoln (like we can afford new cars these days LOL), he’s kept some semblance of non-annoyance which I credit to me giving him a pass after Interstellar.

It’s not like Carl’s Jr. has the best commercial pedigree, either. They used to do the dude-bro commercials objectifying women with varied innuendo around a fast food sandwich, most famously featuring Jessica Simpson attempting to cling to whatever fame she had left.

The drive-thru chain people out east call Hardees now tries to subliminally seduce you into gorging on their selection of sandwiches with the aforementioned McConaughey as narrator. The commercials themselves are an odd amalgamation of reactionary faces and fast zooms into a sandwich that looks nothing like what you’re gonna get out of the wrapper. There isn’t much of a theme here either: unsettling jingle murmured by Matthew with camera zooms into a hamburger superimposed in front of your 7th grade notebook cover. If that doesn’t make you want to launch yourself off the couch and get a Western Bacon Chee then I’m not sure what you want.

Crisscut fries.

Sycuan

Ok, when have you ever seen this many smiling youthful people inside a casino? That’s right, you haven’t. Most casinos I’ve ever been in are stuffed to the brim with bluehaired oxygen tank-toting chain smokers tossing their retirement into the penny slots. Do you really want to go catch Slightly Stoopid or Iration in concert? I didn’t think so. I’ve only frequented casinos for the cheap buffet fare and not for sinking what little money I have into the slots. The commercial also features Steve Garvey, so make of that what you will.

We really have Sycuan to half-blame for getting the retired numbers moved off the top of the batter’s eye anyway.

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So let’s hear it. What commercials have you scrambling for the mute on your remote control?