LOL, MOBILE MEDIA
No, man. Promotional vehicles are not whimsical client engagement tools. They re harbingers of fiery doom. They re existential crises imbued with motive force. Behold:
The Wienermobile
Look, hot dogs are delicious, OK? No one around here s saying otherwise. But there s a certain amount of willful ignorance involved. Every time you wrap your lips around an over-processed sausage, your brain is making a subconscious command decision to suppress questions like, Are there horses in this? and Why is it the color of tonsils? But one eyeful of the Wienermobile and your cerebral cortex is flooded with images of SOMETHING. It s a giant, glossy, plastic intestine stuffed with glossy, plastic flesh and driven by a crack team of wiener cultists that reportedly have ties to US congress:
The hotdogger position of driving the Wienermobile is open to U.S. citizens, and the job lasts from the first of June until the following first of June. Only college seniors who are about to graduate are eligible. Both current hotdoggers and Oscar Mayer recruiters visit college campuses across the country in search of the next round of hotdoggers. Candidates are screened from an average of 2000 applicants. Every March, a pool of thirty final-round candidates are brought to Kraft Foods and Oscar Mayer headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, for interviews. Each vehicle can hold two hotdoggers, and twelve people are chosen. Currently there are about 300 hotdogger alumni. U.S. Congressman Paul Ryan was not a hotdogger, but reportedly drove the Wienermobile one time as a guest during a summer job as a Kraft sales representative.
Woah.
Photo via Eventxchange.biz
Meow Mix Mobile
So, we want it to look a little like an acid-induced hallucination from the Disney adaptation of a popular Victorian children s novel, but we also want its eyes to fix passersby with an accusing, manic stare that bathes the darkest reaches of the soul in the floodlights of judgement, slavering gleefully in anticipation of their fall from grace. Like a real cat. Cool?
Planters NUTmobile
So, basically:
Avoid spending your summer fighting ants in the backyard by following the NUTmobile on Twitter.
City Bus Snake Wrap Copenhagen Zoo
You know what I don t have enough of in my life? Violent reminders of my mortality. What I want what I think most people want, really is a hint that civilization s dominion over nature is little more than a comforting delusion, and that we re all really one meteor strike away from returning to the boiling jungles from which we once emerged.
Butagaz Mobile Gas Tank
This shiny mound of fiery death on wheels was built in 1962 as a promotional vehicle for the butane distribution company Butagaz, and made its first appearance at the Tour de France. I can t even look at this thing without bracing for the inevitable explosion. Maybe, like, pre-Bruce Willis, when we all still believed that gas tanks on trucks could remain inert during transport, maybe in those golden days, you could get away with marketing via an oversized explosive device at a major sporting event, but this is a no-no in a post-Die Hard world.