Image via Complex Original
Companies go to great lengths to sell their products to you. They'll try to pull at your heartstrings, make you laugh, or do their best to come off as cool and hip. Hey, and for some of the top companies out there, it works. But for each commercial that does strike a chord, there's one that completely flops, is a little bit too weird, or just falls flat. It's a hard line to walk, but you have to give them credit for trying to be innovative. (At least we don't have those boring wholesome commercials from the 60s.) Here's a Brief History of Outrageous Tech Commercials that will make you laugh just as fast as it will make you do a facepalm.
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Facebook is Like a Chair
Company: Facebook
Year: 2012
"Chairs are for people. That's why chairs are like Facebook."
Yeah, beauty is a hard thing to capture, and some companies try a little too hard to make poetry.
T-Pain and Toshiba
Company: Toshiba
Year: 2010
T-Pain selling laptops? Yeah, that'll work. Mega-gigabytes son! It's better than Will.i.am at least.
Facebook Home: Airplanes and Screaming Goats
Company: Facebook
Year: 2013
The company tried showcasing how much users could get sucked in to the Internet with Facebook Home, which could have been clever if they just hadn't made it so weird. On Facebook's YouTube channel, they disabled comments on the video, which pretty much tells you how badly it was received.
SoftBank Quentin Tarentino Commercial
Company: SoftBank Mobile
Year: 2009
It's easy to see that Quentin Tarantino gets a lot of inspiration from Asian culture and puts it into his movies, but who knew he could get into character like this?
We Need a Larger Tray
Company: Accuserv
Year: Early 2000s
This commercial for an Accuserv scanner repair reminds us to think twice before getting into mischief.
Lorde, Messi, and Samsung
Company: Samsung
Year: 2013
This commercial is debatable: some find it beautiful, while some find it confusing, obscure and overblown. Samsung may be trying too hard to throw in a popular song and a popular athlete for their product.
Hipster Troll Carwash with RDJ
Company: HTC
Year: 2013
HTC recently teamed up with Robert Downey, Jr. for a campaign that placed RDJ in a mission to find out what "HTC" stands for, and Hipster Troll Carwash is by far one of the oddest of their commercials. If you had freakin' Iron Man for one of your commercials, wouldn't you have thought of something a tad bit cooler?
A Crime Deterrent from Sprint
Company: Sprint
Year: 2006
Looks like Sprint was on to something. Guess you can add this to the list of the many uses of your phone.
Mrs. Claus Getting Naughty
Company: Boost Mobile
Year: 2009
"Santa's busy and I have needs."
Here's something you never thought you'd see (or ever wanted to see.) Thanks Boost Mobile.
Nicolas Cage For Sankyo
Company: Sankyo
Year: 2006
Nic Cage used to one of the baddest men on the planet, but some strange business decisions have led to him being considered a little odd. These commercials (which weren't meant to be seen in the U.S.) don't help. They're for Sankyo's Pachinko, a mechanical game that's used for entertainment and gambling.
