The Best Buy Game On Commercial reflects a world where Santa is unnecessary and unwanted. Best Buy puts the gifts under the tree, Santa is only fit for filling the Christmas stocking of the family dog.
There was a time when commercials were a nice break from reality
There was a time that I looked forward to commercials—-especially around Christmas. Growing up in the fifties, I found them comforting.
My seven-year-old reasoning was that the Russians couldn’t bomb us during a radio commercial. If a friendly man told smokers to “Be Happy Go Lucky” with something that was ‘toasted’, how could anything bad happen during a commercial? (I’m not immune to the fact that something bad happens when you smoke cigarettes but all that came later. At the time cigarette commercials were entertaining.)
There was no logic to this way of thinking but fear overcame logic when I thought about enemy planes carrying bombs and dropping them on my parent’s house. The school’s ‘duck and cover’ drills were enough to give me sleepless nights for months.
Young people nowadays are much more sophisticated than that and laugh at the idea that we could protect ourselves from a nuclear bomb by ducking under a school desk and covering our heads.
But there was a time when commercials were distracting and sometimes a nice break from reality.
Not so anymore. Most commercials seem to reflect reality—-our fears, obsessions, desires, and even perversions.
Santa wouldn’t be able to fit Best Buy’s electronics in his sleigh
And now it seems that even Santa Claus is being maligned.
Case in point: The Best Buy the Game on Santa commercial.
The commercial opens with Santa Ho Ho Hoing and then his expression changes to concern when he sees all the stockings filled and presents everywhere.
Mama appears with her coffee mug and a smirk and she says something about this “didn’t leave any room for you. Awkward”
She then points to the family dog with his stocking and says “Maybe you could fill his.”
What wrong with that commercial? Just about everything! Santa is looked on as unnecessary and an anachronism.
We’re made to feel sorry for the jolly old Gent because he came to a house that Best Buy ‘hit’ first with all kinds of gifts that Santa couldn’t afford or would not be able to fit in his sleigh.
I no longer have little kids at home but I would have a hard time explaining to them the reason that Santa was unnecessary in our household on Christmas Eve.
I don’t’ know what Best Buy was thinking when they dreamed this little gem up; no, I think I do know—they were thinking of the almighty dollar and wanted their commercial to appeal to the ‘modern’ kid whose love for all things electronic rivals that of mother’s love and the true spirit of Christmas.
Maybe Best Buy thinks those ‘kids’ won’t have a problem seeing a commercial where ‘mother’ is snickering at the pathetic old man in the red suit whose only purpose on Christmas Eve is to fill the Christmas stocking of the family pet.
I hope I’m wrong.
Leave a Reply