Parody Commercial

Florida Man Buys Entire State For $550,000.

"FUCK YOU, BALTIMORE! If you’re dumb enough to buy a new car this weekend, you’re a big enough schmuck to come to Big Bill Hell’s Cars!”

— Big Bill Hell's Cars commercial

This comedy trope is a kissing cousin of both the Show Within a Show and the Commercial Switcheroo. Typically placed immediately at the end of a segment, it seems like the show you're watching has just cut to the mid-show commercial break. However, it quickly becomes evident (ideally in about the time it takes most folks to start getting out of their La-Z-Boy) that the commercial is actually a fake-out, for an absurd or grotesque product. It may also figure into the plot, especially in shows about people in Show Business who would do anything for a break.

When done as part of a Sketch Comedy show, the product can be pretty much anything. When done as part of a more typical comedy, the mock product usually ties into the plot of the show in some fashion. In any case, the commercial itself is a practical field guide to various Advertising Tropes, although this tends to be more pronounced in the case of a Sketch Comedy.

Compare/contrast with Show Within a Show, Commercial Switcheroo and Trailer Spoof. Real Trailer, Fake Movie is a subtrope.

For more parodic content, see what The Other Wiki has to say about parody commercials.

---

Examples:

Advertising

• Orangina has made a series of commercials that parody various commercial types - for instance, Orangina body deodorant.
• This infomercial for Steampunk rayguns from Weta Workshops.
• Believe it or not, the legendary (in the Los Angeles area, at least) Cal Worthington "And his dog, Spot" ads began life as this. There had been a competing chain of used-car dealerships that had the host of the ads bring his dog, Storm, into every commercial, usually sleeping on the hood of one of the featured cars. Worthington, to take the mickey, go the other chain one better and make something memorable, had a parade of different animals that he all claimed to be "his dog Spot".

Anime & Manga

• Black Butler: The bonus episode has a parody commercial for Funtom Company dog food and a parody preview for "The Black Sushi Chef" (based off of a parody image in volume 5).
• Seiji Kishi: Two of the animes he's directed (Magikano and My Bride is a Mermaid) parody commercials reminiscent of the way it's done in Western Animation to get a joke across. Goes something like this: Have a problem? Then, have we the product just for you! See "Before" and "After"; This Product Will Change Your Life so well that you've just gotta have it! But Wait, There's More!: If you call now, you'll get a useless Free Prize at the Bottom! And all of this for only 9980 yen! So, what are you waiting for? Operators Are Standing By! Call now! To order, please dial 0000-4155-XXXX-55XX-0000 today! Side Effects Include... sneezing, coughing, vomiting, fainting, zit faces, heart attacks and turning into a green-skinned monster and may vary according to its user. Unreadable Disclaimers or Rattling Off Legals may apply.
• Blend-S: The end of the second commercial break for episode 4 of the anime has a commercial advertising for a new series in Manga Time Kirara called The S-dere Maid and the Weakling Butler, using the same format that Anthology Comic usually advertises for series. But when Dino interrupts the end of the commercial, viewers starts to recall that plot is what Miu has in mind before the commercial break.
• Himouto! Umaru-chan R episode 5 opens with an ad for Diamond Service, the company that Umaru's brother Taihei works for. At the end of the ad Umaru drops in to deliver the traditional "Our program was brought to you by this excellent sponsor!" message; Taihei asks if his company is really sponsoring the anime, and a caption appears overhead reading "Nope."

Comedy

• Brazilian comedy shows are famous for including such commercials. Most notably, the comedy group Casseta & Planeta, which initially made fun of actual commercials, eventually created fictional products sold by the "monopolist megaconglomerate" Organizações Tabajara. At a certain point, a rival company, Grupo Capivara, appeared. Since it was essentially the same thing as the original, they were sold to a working-class man, "Seu Creysson" (parodying the fact that a Brazilian airline was sold by $1) and started selling products focused on poor people, such as a "palmtop" which consisted of writing on the person's hand.
  • The most recent examples of the trope in Brazil, long after the end of Casseta & Planeta's show, are featured in Tá no Ar, a show that mocks tropes commonly used in current Brazilian television.
  • The local MTV comedy show Hermes e Renato also featured sketches parodying television programs and commercials.
• Tim Wilson's Hillbilly Homeboy album ends with a fake commercial advertising an album called "Love Songs for Losers".
• The Firesign Theatre's albums are full of these.
  • On "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger", Lieutenant Bradshaw gives a commercial for Loosener's Castor Oil Flakes "with real glycerin vibrafoam! It doesn't just wash your mouth out—it cleans the whole system, right on down the line."
  • Their commercial for Bear Whiz bear, from Everything You Know is Wrong, is considered a classic: "As my daddy says, 'son, it's in the water—that's why it's yellow'"
  • Boobie Chew is a hormone-filled gum that's supposed to make your breasts grow. "Even works for men!"
• Cheech & Chong's "Peter Rooter" from Los Cochinos, which parodies the Roto-Rooter commercial jingle.

Comic Books

• Chris Ware's "Acme Novelty Library" comics contain tons of fake ads, most of which look like old-time comic book or magazine ads.
  • The characters of Rusty Brown and Chalky White originally appeared in ads for the "GI Jim Collector's Club". In later books, they became main characters of extended stories.
• The Simpsons comics have had quite a few fake ads over the years. Each one usually has had a small something give it away, such as "THIS IS NOT AN ADVERTISEMENT" appearing in small print above an ad of Frosty Krusty Flakes (in place of the standard "ADVERTISEMENT"), an ad for Krusty's Three-Fingered Fireworks stating the offer is not valid in the following states and goes on to list all 50 state abbreviations of the USA, or some having an "This offer void after September 1968" disclaimer or similar.
• The very first DC Comics issue of The Powerpuff Girls (Cartoon Network Starring #1) was an issue length commercial for Mostess Snack Cakes, a spoof of some of the genre's serious superheroes shilling for Hostess in 70s comics.

Fan Works

• Captain Proton and the Planet of Lesbians has advertisements for unsafe products like asbestos, benzedrine, lead paint, and radio-active health water.
• Flaming Frost: Tigerstar does this to bribe Jaypaw and Lionpaw into training in the Dark Forest. Although Spottedleaf interrupts the first one with Jaypaw, it works on Lionpaw.
• YuyaVision has commercials based off of events in Yuya's life and even ones from Omega Mart.

Films — Live-Action

• In the "Weird Al" Yankovic movie UHF contains a number of these, including commercials for TV shows such as "Conan the Librarian" and movies such as "Gandhi II".
  • Also Spatula City, a commercial for a mega-store selling only...spatulas.
• C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, a parody film depicting what it would be like if the South had won the war, had commercial breaks throughout the mock documentary that showed commercials that would have appealed to that country at the time, involving slavery more often than not. About half of them feature products with racist names and/or mascots that really existed... in the North... after the Civil War.
• The three films of the Robocop series featured fake commercials breaking up the storyline, including one for an ultra powerful sunblock to exposit that the ozone layer had been destroyed in the film's reality, although the sunblock itself could be harmful to the health if overused.
  • And Starship Troopers, also made by Paul Verhoeven, gave us the memorable recruiting commercials for the Terran Federation Fleet and Mobile Infantry, painting a rosy picure of service in the Federation's armed forces. Service Means Citizenship!
  Would You Like To Know More?
• A twisted variation in Batman (1989): "New and improved Joker products! With a new secret ingredient: Smilex!"
• At one point, The Sixth Sense cuts to a fake cough syrup ad. The main character throws a shoe at the television to turn it off.
• Stay Tuned, about a couple Trapped in TV Land, naturally features several of these, such as one for the non-alcoholic children's drink "Yogi Beer" and "MaxHell" cassette tapes in a direct parody of Maxell's "Blown Away Guy" campaign.
• At one point in Freaked, a Show Within a Show breaks for an ad for Macheesmo, a canned cheese product that's marketed in an aggressively macho manner.
• In the film version of The Moon is Blue, Patty appears on television in a singing commercial for beer.
• A Deleted Scene from A Star Is Born (1954) has Esther doing a TV singing commercial for Trinidad Coconut Oil Shampoo.
• A Face in the Crowd has a montage showing the Browning, Schlagel & McNally agency's new TV campaign for Vitajex featuring Lonesome Rhodes. Most of the commercials play up the Sex for Product angle.
• Major League has the Cleveland Indians doing their version of American Express's "Do You Know Me" ad, ending with Willie Mays Hayes sliding into home plate saying, "Don't steal home without it."
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ends with Rick Dalton, dressed as his Bounty Law character, shooting a commercial for Red Apple Cigarettes. After the camera cuts, he spits out the cigarette and vents his frustrations.
• Barbie (2023): After Stereotypical Barbie hits her lowest point, the film cuts to a cheerful commercial for a "Depression Barbie", complete with anguished facial expressions, sweatpants all day, and watching the BBC's Pride and Prejudice seven times until she falls asleep.
• Dreamboat features an animated commercial for a hair tonic called Penetroleum. The ad was created by UPA, themselves no stranger to the world of television advertising.

Literature

• Beauty Queens is full of parody commercials for products like Breast in Show, "Because, 'you're perfect just the way you are,' is what your guidance counselor says. And she's an alcoholic,'" and TV shows like Captains Bodacious IV: Badder and More Bodacious.
• MARZENA: Transhuman Ambrosia has a whole chapter dedicated to this, we got Tresisda vs Spartan (Dragon vs iWin OS), Famous entrepreneur J-Mark Applebaum and his digital son Barry telling you that Tresisda cares about family, and Santa Claus turning velociraptors into long dead rockstars using the new Tresisda Sunglasses.

Live-Action TV

• Both MADtv (1995) and Saturday Night Live have employed this concept for years, advertising bogus products in order to make fun of various Advertising Tropes or make fun of a current event (such as the cold opening on the Jonah Hill episode from season 33 where disgraced governor Eliot Spitzer [Bill Hader] advertises a new law firm that deals with sexual court cases, such as injuries from faulty vibrators, U.S. customs seizing German porn, and slip and falls in gay bath houses). For SNL, "Happy Fun Ball" is probably the best-known; MADtv (1995), meanwhile, featured a plush toy called "Tickle Me Emo", an angsty, stereotypically emo version of Elmo from Sesame Street ("You don't understand what I'm going through!"). Other sketch shows, like Fridays, In Living Color!, WB's Hype, and SCTV have done fake commercials, though it can be safe to say SNL and MADtv (1995) have the most memorable parodies.
  • Bass-o-matic is a strong contender for "best-known SNL parody commercial". It's also one of the first.
  • "Hi, I'm Sam Waterson... Robots are everywhere...
  • Somethin's always cookin at the Cluckin' Chicken!
  • The Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer sketches were presented with a listing of fictional sponsors ("Brought to you by Dog Assassin. When you can't bear to put him to sleep, maybe it's time to call Dog Assassin!")
  • Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
  • Inverted by the rare spoof commercial to spawn a real product. A 1990 SNL spot pitched the "Chia Head," a sort of Chia Pet treatment to replace lost hair. Five years later, Joseph Enterprises, the novelty's maker, began selling actual Chia Heads modeled after various cartoon characters... and later a version in "tribute" to Barack Obama.
    • When Gillette razors invented the dual blade razors, SNL spoofed them with their ad for triple bladed razors, because you'll buy anything! Twenty years later, real razors now offer models with as many as seven blades.
  • New Shimmer. Is it a floor wax or a dessert topping?
  • "Get a Nike(y) Turkey, and PUMP IT!" (parody of Reebok Pumps)
  • The TBS show ''Tush', which was modeled loosely on SNL, routinely did a parody commercial or three per show.
  • An early commercial parody poked fun at the United States Navy's "Not Just A Job, It's An Adventure" campaign, showing the less-than-glamorous side of military service: peeling potatoes, doing laundry, painting ships, scrubbing toilets, etc., followed by the slogan, "it's not just a job, it's $96.78 a week."
  • "Einstein Express: When it absolutely, positively has to be there the day before yesterday."
• The episode of Roseanne that parodies fifties sitcoms also features parodies of fifties commercials.
• In Monty Python's Flying Circus, the animated links included memorable parody commercials for such products as Whizzo Butter (now with 10% more less, and completely indistinguishable from a dead crab). Crelm Toothpaste (with the miracle ingredient Fraudulin) shows up in two different episodes, once as part of a Commercial Switcheroo that starts with American Defense and moves on to Shrill Petrol, and the second time with Sex for Product testimonials from fire-breathing dragons. Episode 5 has a parody of the old Charles Atlas ads.
• Jasper Carrott's BBC show Canned Carrott had a fake 'End of Part One/Two' section and spoof ads. Being a BBC show, with no 'real' paid advertisements, the director had free rein to cut up real commercials and splice spoof sections in (like Jasper borrowing a friend's new Renault and taking it rallying, with predicable consequences), without any conflict of interest.
• The Goodies would always have a couple of fake ads halfway through each episode, such as the ill-fated Heinz Meinz Beans boy.
  • A housewife is cleaning up a dirty floor, when a lady comes in with "Fairy Puff" detergent. The lady instantly starts to smear detergent all over, making a far bigger mess than there was before. Frustrated, the housewife takes out a submachine gun and shoots her. "If someone comes in and fouls up your housework, try a Westminister submachine gun!"
  • A shot of a car and a voice-over saying "We put a gallon of economy petrol in this car. Let's see how far it goes." The camera followed the car driving around for a little bit, before it reached a banner saying 'TWENTY MILES'. The car was just about to drive through...and then crashed into the banner. "Robinson's Paper. The strong one."
    • That last one was a parody of an actual petrol advert from the time, which showed a car breaking through paper banners every ten miles. Morecambe and Wise also spoofed this ad: in their version the car was shown travelling some outlandish distance in the tens of thousands of miles on a single gallon. When it finally stopped, presenter Ernie waxed lyrical about it, ignoring driver Eric's complaints that the engine of his car was completely worn out.
  • There were several in the episode spoofing the advertising business. "Buy new low suds Mold...or we send the big boys round!"
  • A notable spot had Australian performer Rolf Harris ("Tie Me Kangaroo Down", here played by Graeme) coming home to mother's for dinner with Bristo's gravy. After taking a bite, he falls back and keels over. The tagline: "Bristo's. Gets rid of Rolf Harrises fast."
• The Weird Al Show did this in just about every episode, with ads like "Sport Shoe - you don't deserve to wear them", "Silly Choice Dinners" that had rubber bands as a side item, and an ad for a pizza company that never puts their pizzas in a box to save time.
• Stan Freberg did both parody commercials and real ones.
• Bill Nye the Science Guy usually has parody commercials at least Once an Episode, as the show is structured around looking like, well, a person channel hopping. Examples include advertising planktons as a breakfast cereal, complete with a catchy jingle.
• The show that started Nye's TV career, Almost Live!, also loved making fake commercials advertising "new shows on NBC," fictitous "community events," and fake fly by night trade schools. They were also fond of spoofing Kitschy Local Commercials awful enough to reach Memetic Mutation.
• Subverted in the early ads for Energizer batteries. It would start out looking like a normal commercial, until about halfway through when the absurdity got a bit too much (such as "Chateau Marmoset" wine, or the award-winning film "Dance With Your Feet") ... and then get interrupted by the Energizer bunny, pounding on his little drum, he keeps going and going and going and going and ...
• The sitcom Better Off Ted: Each episode included a fake commercial for the fictitious Veridian Dynamics company, the workplace setting for the show.
• The 30 Rock episode "Gavin Volure" has one. Gavin Volure (Steven Martin) tries to justify creating a fake corporation by saying that the commercial never said what the company does. Indeed it's just a random assortment of footage and words.
  Female narrator: Innovation. Tomorrow. America.
• iCarly: The Sack is a dead-on spoof on the many uses of the sleeved blanket Snuggies, but sans the sleeves. Hilarity Ensues.
• The Goodies had a spoof commercial break in between the two halves of each episode, with Tim Brooke-Taylor's send-ups of Heinz adverts then current on British TV being a Running Gag.
• The Gruen Transfer's segment "The Pitch", in which two advertising agencies compete to "sell the unsellable", making commercials for things such as whale meat and holidays to Baghdad.
  • Sometimes subverted, however, in that while most agencies approach The Pitch with a parody ad, not all do; some are actually pretty damn convincing. Twice now, a political party has approached the ABC to buy an ad originally aired on the pitch. (The Australian Democrats and The Greens.) Both times the ABC said no. In another example, an advert promoting mandatory euthanasia was so convincing that an actual Australian right-to-die organisation approached the agency to do a real ad on the issue; the next week, the panel discussed it and almost unanimously agreed that the 'parody' ad was more convincing than the real one.
• Funky Squad would have genuine ads from The '70s mixed with the 'stars' promoting various fake products with a Values Dissonance twist, such as hair spray "with added hydro fluro carbons".
• The Amanda Show had at least one an episode.
• Done beautifully in the Trapped in TV Land episode from Supernatural. The typical cut to commercial occurs, and then opens up into a commercial for genital herpes. Starring Sam Winchester. The poor guy.
• The Chaser's War On Everything One of The Chaser's favourites is the mock commercial. Often, they're shown next to each other, for a fake ad break. The network the show aired on doesn't have commercial breaks.
• Newstopia always included a fake commercial in the middle of the real commercial break, as well as a fake preview of an upcoming show such as Inspektor Herring just before the second half.
• The Babylon 5 episode "And Now For a Word", done as a series of interviews and reports from a visiting journalist, features an ad from the Psi Corps, complete with Subliminal Seduction.
• The Colbert Report: Stephen made his own version of an anti gay marriage ad.
• That Mitchell and Webb Look, like many sketch shows, have done a couples of these. Notably cressps;
  Voiceover: Once you cressp, you just can't splessp!
  Mitchell: That doesn't make any sense!
  Webb: [spits out the food] Oh, god! They're horrible!
• KYTV, being a spoof on commercial satellite TV, featured a handful of parody commercials in every episode, as did its predecessor, Radio Active.
• The Rick Mercer Report always has one or two an episode, often riffing on current political or business situations.
• The first episode of Six Feet Under included some parody adverts for mortuary products.
• Each episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! has one of these, usually advertising something silly from Gloopy (P).
• This idea was at the core of Sesame Street. Its creators realized TV commercials were more memorable for their target audience than either school or the children's programming of the day, and that there was a specific set of "useful things" that could be taught effectively in a mock commercial. Everything else the show has become known for evolved out of that ^note  This entry was brought to you by the letter T and the letter V and the number 6.
• The Peter Serafinowicz Show was fond of these and would feature them at least Once an Episode.
  • Probably the most well-known series are the ones starring Brian Butterfield. The first one is a direct parody of the PI Helpline adverts before spinning off into other subjects like dieting and karaoke.
• The Fast Show had some of these, mostly featuring Cheesy Peas.
• Portlandia takes these to a whole new level of Mind Screw in its third season by airing parody ads for the Portland Milk Advisory Board in between actual commercials.
  • Making matters worse, Geico frequently runs an ad during the show that is disguised to look like a Portlandia sketch and even features the waitress character from the pilot episode.
• Father Ted had a spoof ad for a priests' chatline that was a dead-on parody of a real-life ad for a gay chatline.
• Just like the movies, RoboCop: The Series has at least one of these per episode. It's one of the main comedic draws of the show, usually advertising deadly Commander Cash toys, but oftentimes other things as well.
• Horrible Histories likes to parody well-known (usually British) commercials; its sketches have included "We Sell Any Monk" and "God Compare." It's also had a recurring Infomercial character called The Shouty Man. (Their parody commercials really wouldn't be mistaken for out of show ads, though, due to them featuring characters in period dress.)
• Full Frontal with Samantha Bee had parody commercial breaks during the 2020 Election episode. One parody car commercial boasted how great their cars were for driving out of the country into the Canadian border. Another advertised commemorative plates with Republicans' faces on them, with a voiceover by Will Arnett. Yet another advertised a scented candle that smelled like men for women alone in quarantine.
• WandaVision: Wanda creates fake commercials built around Genre Throwbacks to classic sitcoms, all of them tying in to various traumatic events in her life.
  • The first episode advertises a Toastmate 2000 by Stark Industries. The toaster being advertised sounds like one of Tony's repulsors enaging when it's turned on, and it has a blinking red light reminiscent of that on the Stark Industries-built missiles that killed Wanda and Pietro's parents.
  • The second episode advertises a fancy Strücker wristwatch. Strücker was the HYDRA scientist whose experiments on Loki's scepter gave Wanda and Pietro their powers.
    "Strücker. He'll make time for you!"
  • The third episode features a spoof of the 1970s Calgon bath soap commercials for a product called Hydra-Soak ("Find the goddess within!"). It's revealed that the HYDRA experiments ended up greatly amplifying Wanda's existing magical powers, essentially setting her on the path to becoming the mythical Scarlet Witch.
  • The fifth episode has Grey DeLisle narrating an advertisement for Lagos paper towels, the most absorbant paper towel available. In Lagos, Wanda accidentally killed several people, including Wakandan humanitarian workers, in the course of trying to relocate an exploding Crossbones. The UN used this in turn to bring down the Sokovia Accords onto the Avengers.
    "Lagos. For when you make a mess you didn't mean to!"
  • The sixth episode sees a claymation shark approach a red-headed castaway on an island, telling the castaway that he used to always be hungry before he started feeding on Yo-Magic! yogurt ("The snack for survivors!"). This is followed by a timelapse of the castaway slowly withering away to a skeleton. Agatha Harkness seeks to drain and steal Wanda's powers and leave her a withered husk.
  • The seventh episode promotes an antidepressant called Nexus. The segment of the ad listing the side effects is directly calling out Wanda for withdrawing into a false reality that is only making her problems worse.
    "Nexus. Because the world doesn't revolve around you. Or does it?"
• The Boys: In "Glorious Five Year Plan", with A-Train rebranding himself as a symbol of social justice and African culture, Vought decides to capitalize on this by creating a new commercial for his Turbo Rush energy drink. The commercial is a shot-for-shot remake of the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial, just with A-Train using his super speed to separate the riot police and protesters as they're about to clash and handing a can of Turbo Rush to one of the cops.
• Short Ribbs has done too many to list, but they include Fad trash bags, Creepy Crawlers Motel 7, "Blisterine" and a spoof of coffee ads, in which Patty Maloney and a cross-dressed Billy Barty drink coffee that apparently is made from garden soil.

Magazines

• MAD frequently does the print version of this, satirizing magazine ads. Things got interesting in this respect once the magazine started carrying real ads... which is why longtime editor Bill Gaines wouldn't carry ads.
• GAMES magazine used to run a fake ad in every issue. It was listed in the table of contents with the tagline, "Which of the pitches is full of hitches?"
• Computer Games Magazine frequently runs ads for fictional game studio Schadenfreude Interactive. Because, honestly, who can resist Survival Horror karaoke, Mecha-assisted fishing, and racing against elder gods?
• The pornographic magazine Hustler would carry parody ads, usually to express Larry Flynt's opinions and beliefs.
• The Osborne 1 luggable computer had a print ad captioned "The guy on the left doesn't stand a chance," listing its advantages versus an ordinary non-computerized briefcase. The June 4, 1984 issue of InfoWorld included a parody of the ad's text, here attributed only to "one of the munitions magazines," which gave the advantage back to the guy on the left by placing an Uzi submachine gun inside his briefcase, making the point that the Osborne's processing power is no match for the Uzi's 9 mm firepower.

Music

• "Divers Ayres On Sundrie Notions" by P.D.Q. Bach, a series of 18th-century style singing commercials.
• The music video for Foo Fighters' song "Big Me" gives us "Footos: the Fresh Fighter" as a parody of Mentos ads.
• The Who Sell Out by The Who is a Fake Radio Show Album that includes fake commercials (for real products), most of them written by John Entwistle. (It also includes real jingles from Buccaneer Broadcaster Radio London.)
• The Commercial Album by The Residents is a Concept Album where each and every song is about a minute long because the band felt that pop songs and commercials could be combined into one for a bigger financial benefit. Each song on "The Commercial Album" is therefore only about a minute long, much like a radio advertising spot. Listeners are instructed to play them three times in a row to get the feeling of a typical pop song, if they want that experience.
• The Arrogant Worms' first album included a send-up of advertisements that shamelessly boast of their incredible deals with "No Sale / No Store".
• The video for "Dangerous", by Big Data, features advertisers pitching an ad to the executives of an athletic shoe company. The ad starts out fairly normally, with attractive women jogging while wearing the company's shoes, but then it gets violent.

Professional Wrestling

• Due to their lack of TNA bookings, The Motor City Machine Guns ran a pitch offering their services, which amounted to using your stuff, to anyone willing to pay $2000 dollars an hour for them. Oh, Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley would throw in two free Shamwows to those who called in early!
• After she beat Ivelisse Vélez for SHINE's Title at SHINE 21, Leah Von Dutch planned to open the LAHM House Of Champions, an awesome Hawaiian mansion where you could learn to be as awesome as her. But she needed your help to get it finished! Dutch agreed to say hi to you when you bump into her at a show for the starting donation of $1000, just as long as you didn't touch her. $50,000 got you an autographed picture of her looking at your face book page. $55,000 dollars a night earned you a stay at a motel down the street from the mansion once it was finished! It wasn't to be, the successive onslaught of Su Yung, Amazing Kong and Nevaeh ensured she would not get that title shot.
• (StephenPNewStephenPNewStephenPNew) Call Stephen P New (StephenPNewStephenPNewStephenPNew) If You Need To Sue (StephenPNewStephenPNewStephenPNew) An Outlaw Mudshow Or Two (StephenPNewStephenPNewStephenPNew) Cause They're All Ass!
• Do you think today's wrestling is too politically correct? Are you tired of seeing super kick, after super kick, AFTER SUPER KICK...well ANX hears you, and that's why in 2016 they're vowing to make wrestling great again. What, 2016 is too far gone? Don't worry, as long as Kenny King is great and Rhett Titus is great they can and will make wrestling great, even if it kills them.

Puppet Shows

• Every episode of Roland Rat: The Series had a parody commercial for something like a My Little Warthog toy with realistic smell, or a brand of chocolate that would prevent people stealing them because "They melt in your hands, not in your mouth!"

Radio

• A Prairie Home Companion does these regularly, for a range of products including Bee-Bop-A-Ree-Bop Rhubarb Pie and Powdermilk Biscuits. This is part of the Genre Throwback to the old radio variety shows that had prominent sponsorships. To wit: the show's house band is even named after a fictitious brand of shoe.
• That Mitchell and Webb Sound: What sounds like a typical advert for a brand of bread or butter eventually turns out to be an advert for... petrochemicals, complete with a voice cutting in to proclaim "BUY MORE PETROCHEMICALS!"
• Rush Limbaugh often uses parody ads in bumpers (including the aforementioned "Spatula City" spot from UHF); but also had an original spot focusing on the Barnacle Brothers and their 60-Second Sale.
• A regular feature on Martin/Molloy, despite it airing on commercial radio. Many were one-offs, but Tony and Mick became so enamoured of some the characters/products involved that they returned multiple times, such as 'The Martin/Molloy Pay TV Network'.
• Round the Horne had these in profusion. Staid BBC announcer Douglas Smith would go seriously off-script to shill the miracle product Dobberoids (rejuvenation for the tired horse). When called to heel by Kenneth Horne, Smith would anxiously point out that a BBC salary is too pitiful and meagre for a man to live on, and the opportunity to make a bit on the side by slipping in some covert advertising was simply too good to miss.

Theatre

• Bells Are Ringing opens with an ad for Susanswerphone, the answering service the heroine works for. This ends with a Description Cut to the Susanswerphone offices, which are considerably less glamorous than the ad.
• In the opera Paul Bunyan, the One Note Cooks' "I Am" Song leads to anachronistic sales pitches:
  Sam: Do you feel a left-out at parties, when it comes to promotion are you passed over, and does your wife talk in your sleep? Then get our nearest agent to tell you about Soups for Success!
  Ben: You owe it to yourself to learn about Beans, and how this delicious food is the sure way to the Body Beautiful. We will mail you a fascinating booklet, Beans for Beauty, by return of post if you send us your address.

Toys

• Some series of Wacky Packages include "Wack-O-Mercials", fake advertisements for products, on the back of some stickers. Some will be for previously-released Wackies, while others have been for wholly original creations. Some series instead create fake coupons as parody advertisements.

Video Games

• The Grand Theft Auto series is rife with these spoof commercials:
  • An ad in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from Cluckin' Bell, a fictional KFC and Taco Bell look-alike, which stresses how processed and disgusting their food is, as well as the inhumane manner in which the chickens are treated.
    "The chicken is a bird with a tiny brain,
    So we assume he doesn't feel any pain,
    We shrink their heads and we breed 'em fast,
    Six wings, forty breasts, then they're gassed!"

    — A fragment from the first commercial

    "Filled full of hormones, so they get fat,
    At least we no longer slip in a rat,
    I love chicken with a shitty smell,
    And that's why I love Cluckin' Bell!"

    — A fragment from the second commercial
  • Grand Theft Auto III features an advertisement for Eris Running Shoes, an obvious Nike look-alike, which stresses the alleged worker abuse in their factories in southern Asia.
    A young boy: It's fun! We get to play with knives! My friend Joey sewed his hands together! Yesterday, I made a dollar!
  • Grand Theft Auto 2 also has parody ads on the radio:
    You might be surprised to learn than 93% of investments are ethical, eco-friendly, and wide open to market collapse. A crash can strike without warning, wiping clean a lifetime of work and saving to destroy your future, and the future of your family. The people at Third World Bank have different ideas, capturing the earning potential of underdeveloped countries and spreading your money across a wide range of tobacco, defense, and pharmaceutical investments. Third World, keeping your money safe no matter the cost.
• The Saints Row series also features plenty of parody commercials on the radio:
  • Saints Row and Saints Row 2 feature commercials for Freckle Bitch's, a chain of fast food restaurants that is an obvious parody of Wendy's. In the first game, a promiscuous young woman talks about the restaurant's offerings almost entirely in double entendres. In the second game, she sounds like an elderly woman and coughs throughout the commercial.
  • Saints Row 2 features two parody commercials for Ship It, a boat dealership, starring Vladimir, an Eastern European man voiced by Jason Zumwalt (aka Roman Bellic). He talks about how useful the boats are for trafficking and threatens to kill the listener's family if he doesn't buy boats from the dealership.
  • Saints Row: The Third has a number of hilarious commercials, including promos for Nyteblayde that pretty much sum up the plot of the show (and the quality of the acting).
• The trivia computer game You Don't Know Jack played parody commercials at the end of each game. These were so popular that one of the games in the series (The Ride) even included an audio CD of some of the more memorable parodies. In newer revisions of the game, the parody is brought to the start of the game as it ties in to a new game mechanic^note Wrong answer of the day, where getting an answer wrong will score you points. The parody-ad is a hint as to which question you must answer wrongly.
• Streets of SimCity and Sim Copter both featured similar radio commercials for things such as bottled water ("some waters taste, well, watery"), car-mounted weapons, and other Sim games.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines had radio commercials for, among other things, a restaurant called Frickin' Chicken ("That's some f***ing good chicken!") and a sitcom about a banker whose late wife comes back as an ATM. These were also advertised in billboards around town.
• Twisted: The Game Show, a Party Game for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, was done up like a game show and features (extremely short) fake commercials every few rounds. Some of the minigames have the same fake commercials appear on miniature TVs. Needless to say, most of the products being advertised are ridiculous beyond reason ("It's both a shoe polish and a toothpaste!")
• Mass Effect 2 is chock full of these - ads for everything from a production of Hamlet with an all-elcor (heavyworlder aliens with a Starfish Language) cast to plastic surgery on asari head-tentacles ("Your scalp is so beautiful! Mine's so gangly and asymmetrical") to indentured servants ("Indenture Tech. You've been a slave to your employees for far too long. Shouldn't it be the other way around?") The creepiest ones are like Facebook ads taken to their logical stalker-ish extreme - face-recognition ads that call your character by name as they walk by and incorporate details of their life presumably drawn from databanks ("Commander Shepard! It has been (robot voice) two years (normal voice) since your last paycheck.") Many of them are hilarious.
• An advertisement for Lollipop Chainsaw has a live-action Juliet promoting "Zom-Be-Gone", a laundry detergent that washes off zombie blood.
• Escape Velocity has a few commercial messages. Most are simple variations on "Brought to you by MegaCorp," but there are some sillier ones, like:
  Ever have that "not-so-fresh" feeling? Try our new product — SOAP! "It's clean!"
  This month only, buy one Soong android and get an evil twin free!
• Of all games, one appears in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, advertising the albums of the fictional band^note Actually, Blizzard's in-house band Level 800 Elite Tauren Marines
• A remake of Spectre (1991), Spectre VR CD, has cutscenes featuring parody ads bashing Microsoft (called MacroSoft in the game).
• Borderlands: Radio ads for Engorge, a male enhancement pill, in the DLC The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. You don't get to hear much of them, because your contact, Athena Pierce, is using them to mask her transmissions from the Crimson Lance, but what you do get to hear is extremely over-the-top and hilarious.
• Beginning with the release of the Natural Disasters DLC, Cities: Skylines has radio stations that feature humourous ads from the in-game commercial companies that talk about their products and services in a manner similar to Grand Theft Auto, during intermissions from the in-game music being played.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick has one in the last panel of strip #711, which also pokes fun at the comic's own art style.
• Girl Genius features Spark Roast Coffee, with the slogan "Perfection in every cup", outdoing Nestle's "Coffee's perfect mate" that probably inspired it.
  • Note that the advertised product has perfection in every cup. In that a good gulp makes people, indeed, clearly perceive perfection. With all senses. In everything. For hours non-stop.
• Wallpaper collection of El Goonish Shive includes "Shrink Soda" ads (note that the clothes are unaffected). In somehow related DES comics, Tori Vector once advertised one of Amanda's inventions (just don't show this to Randall Munroe).
• Secret Lives of Mobs: See How Joe's Body Brought Him Fame Instead of Shame◊. HINT: It involves Tzeentch the Dark God of Chaos.
  Some people may experience minor side effects, including dizzyness, headaches, uncontrollable rage, paranoia, insanity, uncontrolled mutation and death. (When we say 'some people may' we mean 'all people will'.)
• Last Place Comics gives us several examples:
  • "Fruity Zoops", which are apparently a currency for a race of donut-shaped people.
  • "Pickle Too Slippery" is an advertisement for something (we never learn what) with a spokesman with the power to stop time speaking.
  Has this ever happened to you? Pickle too slippery? Frozen in time by an all-powerful spokesman? Trapped in a private hell? Unable to scream?
  • And then there's attachable speed lines and wearable shock lines.

Web Animation

• Flipnote Warrior: After a stressful nightmare sequence, the animation suddenly does an obviously fake sponsor eyecatch featuring Nintendou and Bandei.

Web Original

• Some of Dina Marino 's videos contain parody commercials (like the Melbourne Sexual University one)
• This is also a common device on the Homestar Runner toons.
  • Senorial Day cuts between two different Parody Commercials, both focusing on the "holiday sales events" of car (?) dealerships.
  • The Strong Bad Email "candy product" ends with a commercial for the candy bar SBlounchked!, sending up Mentos-style Bottled Cool pitches.
  • "Family Resemblence", a bonus email included on one of the Strong Bad Email DVDs, featured Pom Pom and his hypothetical family doing a commercial for Jurvy Skat, "the classic game of Oh-No-You-Don't", that riffs on ads for family board games.
  • The Blubb-O's commercial parodies many devices used in fast food commercials.
  • "Coach Z's 110%" is a mock infomercial for a fitness training video series pitched by Coach Z.
• Commercials are a Running Gag in Battle for Dream Island. Starting from Battle For Dream Island Again, these commercials can sometimes be interrupted (at first by Golf Ball), but one of them in Battle for BFDI was interrupted by Four.
• Parody commercials are a staple of Less is Morgue, where the mid-episode ad breaks are all inspired by the bizarre, often intrusive sponsorships you're likely to hear on a regular podcast. So far, these have included Zeus selling condoms, Satan selling condos, an ad for a cannibal restaurant, and an ad for an unethical mobile game about making unethical mobile games.
• A real commercial example: PayAttention.org puts out political ads with stereotypical images of waving flags, eagles, happy families, or whatever - only to reveal that the candidate being promoted is, say, a bag of leaves.
• In the Whateley Universe story "Tales of the MCO", the characters are sitting around watching said television show and MSTing it. It has parody commercials for upcoming movies. The Ivory-Merchant production of "Hulk 1809" and the Oliver Stone-directed "Foucault's Pendulum". And fake cereal ads.
• Banana-nana-Ninja!'s Feast Master story arc has Sudoku giving an infomercial-style riff about the Omni-Functional Kitchen Gadget on a colosseum big-screen.
• Ursula Vernon got a section in her gallery for this stuff. Behold "Red Wombat Tea Co.".
  • Ursula Vernon's podcast The Hidden Almanac ends each episode with sponsor messages, usually one from the show's major sponsor (Red Wombat Tea Co.) and one from a sponsor of the week, such as the Silent Nightclub or Suzy's Seasonal Assassins. A common joke is for a sponsor message to be a response to the previous episode's sponsor message, such as when an episode sponsored by the city library ("Have you gotten lost in a book lately?") was followed by an episode sponsored by a company selling edible bookmarks ("Lost in a book? Already eaten your shoes? Now you can use your bookmark as a handy source of protein"). Some of these, such as the rivalry between Bob's Discount Car Lot and Steve's Used Cars, have turned into long-running story lines.
• The Powerthirst series of commercials, now Defictionalized.
• The Lucky Candy commercial Easter Egg at the end of Bowser's Kingdom episode 5.
• Tobuscus does a lot of parodies of various commercial and commercial themes, from coffee ("Eight O'Clock Coffee") to clothing ("You're Not a Bottle, Boot") to pistachios ("Trapped in a Pistachio Ad") to Axe body spray ("How To Get Women"). Many of these are sponsored by the companies themselves.
• Stuart Ashen has Breakfast Mess, during his Huge Screen v.2 review, a few minutes after the "There are no advertisement breaks. This is the Internet" title card.
• Frilly Shirt includes a number of parody vintage commercials, particularly for the author's own Patented Leopard Oil.
• Just before the midway point of PONIES The Anthology II, we get a series of clips putting various real commercials to the characters of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
• The Nostalgia Critic has begun doing this occasionally in his new set of reviews (post-Review Must Go On).
• DK Vine has these all over the side of the main page, with parodies of things like Evony, male enhancement ads and travel ads with Donkey Kong Country, Banjo-Kazooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day characters and places standing in for the real world ones.
• A regular feature on The John Dredge Nothing To Do With Anything Show, often for K-Tel products.
• Who Back When:
  • For a brief period, Ponken would stop the show for an ad break, only to announce that Who Back When is brought to you by... Who Back When.
  • A few Bonus Episodes have featured trailers for fake Doctor Who audiobooks, featuring Doctor sound bites and the screen names of people who provide reviews for the show on iTunes.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd made one for Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.
• Big Dog Eat Child features parody commercial Jones’ Big Ass Truck Rental and Storage in 2008, starring Robert L. Hines as Toby Jones. This is followed by Jones’ Good ASS BBQ and Foot Massage and Jones’ Cheap ASS Prepaid Legal and Daycare Academy. The former was popularised by Stephen Curry, who performed the jingle as part of his pre-game ritual.
• StacheBros has a parody commercial for 1-UPs, in which Wario advertises a new brand of drugs with the ability to resurrect people.
• Veterans for Peace UK once criticized the British military's policy of recruiting 16-year-olds by creating the video "Action Man: Battlefield Casualties", which showed faux commercials for three Action Man figures that represented the downsides of enlisting in the military at a young age, albeit in ways played for Black Comedy. The figures are PTSD Action Man (who drinks and does cocaine in an attempt to escape the trauma before he eventually resorts to hanging himself), Paralysed Action Man (who is permanently wheelchair-bound because of his spine getting shattered and ends up having to struggle stacking cans at the grocery store to make ends meet after his benefits are cancelled) and Dead Action Man (who is reduced to a bleeding, limb-less corpse from being blown to bits, is said to have died at 19 years old by the coroner examining his remains, recieves a posthumous medal and ends his commercial with two kids acting out his funeral).
• ProtonJon has a stream alert that is a made-up advertisement for the Glitchen Gun, which causes glitches in video games. The game displayed in the mock-up ad is randomly chosen, and the list of possible games shown is based on games that have glitched on stream. According to him, it is also inspired by a parody commercial from the BBC, advertising the Kitchen Gun.
• The third McBusters video has a faux commercial break where we are shown an ad for McBusters Cereal, which is really just burger and fry fragments with enormous marshmallows.

Western Animation

• South Park has done this at least three times:
  • During "Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo", a parody commercial appeared offering a Mr. Hankey toy which consisted of various Mr. Potato Head-like plug-ins that the kids could use to "dress up" a home-made Mr. Hankey. Of course, you get a home-made Mr. Hankey by fishing it out of the toilet.
  • "Cherokee Hair Tampons", which featured a couple of Native American Mexican hucksters hawking "natural health products", had a commercial advertising "natural tampons" made from "real Cherokee hair".
  • "Towelie" featured a mock advert for South Park merchandise - the "Towelie" towel, featuring a button that can be pressed to hear the character's catchphrase "You wanna get high?" (Ironically, in a bit of Defictionalization, an actual Towelie towel was produced! — it doesn't talk, though.)
    • Very ironic, in this case: The showrunners created Towlie for the sole purpose of having a character so stupid that it couldn't be conceivably turned into mindless merchandise. Abusing Poe's Law for fun and profit.
  • "Chinpokomon" featured two mock advertisements. The first was the "Wild Wacky Action Bike", a bicycle with both front and rear handlebars, advertised as "almost impossible to steer". The second product was the "Alabama Man", an action figure of a stereotypical redneck who spends his time drinking beer, bowling, chewing tobacco, and beating his wife ("When Wife asks him where he's been, just use the action button and Alabama Man busts her lip open! 'Shut up, bitch!'"). After a focus group consisting of Cartman, Stan and Kyle dismiss both as "gay", the researcher says, "Oooh, dear. Well, let's keep trying. How about this?" Cut to real commercials.
  • "Free Hat", which was a criticism of altering films, featured an advertisement in the middle for a remastered version of the very first South Park episode, with "new and exciting digital effects".
• The Ren & Stimpy Show featured several mock-adverts, amongst other between-toon-bumpers, between toons. The most famous 'product' advertised was Log, from Blammo - a solid chunk of wood which could be endlessly accessorised ("Action Log! Space Log! Anatomically Correct Log!") and was apparently great for a snack.
  • And fits on your back.
  • It's Log, Log, Log!
  • This may have been the inspiration for Phineas and Ferb's Brick, from Har D Har, which replaced P&F's original idea - the Perry the Platypus Inaction Figure "It does nothing!"
• Animaniacs has had quite a few, such as "The Slapper," "Buttermilk (It Makes a Body Bitter)" and "Branimaniacs."
• Futurama likes to do this on occasion just before the show starts, and has "advertised," among other things, Glagnar's Human Rinds, Molten Boron, and Torgo's Executive Powder in this manner.
  • Walrus Juice: Ride. The. Walrus!
  • Thompson's Teeth: The only teeth strong enough to eat other teeth!
  • CASH, CASH, CASH FOR YOUR BONES! TOO MANY BONES? NOT ENOUGH CASH? CALL CASH BONE! RIBS, SKULLS, SPINES, EVEN CERTAIN TINY EAR BONES! THE LEG BONE'S CONNECTED TO THE CASH BONE!
  • According to the DVD commentaries, these are usually put in when an episode runs a few seconds short. However, Torgo's Executive Power was a major running gag throughout Bender's Big Score, unlike the other one-shot commercials.
  • The Saturday-Morning Cartoon parody "Saturday Morning Fun Pit" had a Strawberry Shortcake parody called Purpleberry Pond repeatedly interrupted by commercials for Purpleberry Puffs breakfast cereal (apparently Segregated Commercial rules don't exist in the 31st century). By the end it was almost impossible to tell where the commercials were stopping and the episode was starting. (And, for added misleading advertising, the Purpleberry Pond characters were continually talking about how healthy purpleberries were, while the cereal was Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs.)
• The sadly short-lived Sheep in the Big City would do this frequently, most often with the Oxymoron company. One memorable Oxymoron ad featured the typical Housewife asking the enthusiastic seller what he was doing in her kitchen, and threatening to call the police on him. Another fake ad parodied Olive Garden's "When you're here, you're family" slogan with a restaurant that treated customers as real family ("You never call, I haven't heard from you in weeks! Why would you do this to us?").
  • "Do you have paper towel absorbent enough to pick up this acid?" "No" Well neither do I, but I do have this extra mint chewing gum"
• Histeria! ran plenty of commercial parodies, each one centering around a historical event (i.e. a record album called "The Greatest Hits of the 1860s") or person (i.e. Raggedy Lyndon Johnson and Squeeze Me Nixon).
• Animalympics featured some parody ads, most of which spoofed Olympic endorsement deals.
• Teen Titans (2003): Our intrepid heroes have been sucked into television-land and must battle the biggest bads in television history. The battleground is a commercial for Zinthos, which may or may not be a corrupting, poisonous, blue gremlin.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) had a fake commercial in the middle of "I See a Funny Cartoon In Your Future" promoting "The Pickle Patch". In it, the Mayor of Townsville is once again eating pickles, saying he's addicted. Ms. Bellum suggests him to try the Pickle Patch, and go cold turkey. The Mayor being the Mayor, however, he eats a cold turkey sandwich with the patch on it.
  Announcer: The Pickle Patch! When you want to quit eating pickles... or when you don't.
• Young Justice (2010) has a commercial for The Reach's Reach sports drink. It's full of Stylistic Suck and is almost unbearably upbeat and happy. G. Gordon Godfrey, an in-universe newscaster, even has a cameo. The drink is intended to make you lose all willpower and be fully addicted to the drink forever over prolonged consumption. Don't you want to Reach For A Reach?
• One segment in Uncle Grandpa featured a parody commercial for a music compilation of Uncle Grandpa singing classic songs. It is a parody of actual commercials like these from The '70s and The '80s. It goes so far as parodying two of the most common methods of purchasing products: Visa becomes Pizza (as in Pizza Steve) and MasterCard becomes MisterGus.
• Quite a few segments of the Garbage Pail Kids Cartoon were parody commercials. Some examples include the Automatic Tattler (a robot that tattles on children when they misbehave) and Have a Nice Meal (a small cube that magically turns into whatever food you want to eat when water is added).
• Robot Chicken had a skit consisting of a commercial for a fictional video game titled Codename: The Abortionator, which advertised such features as being able to kill your parents, urinate on the homeless and the option to make love to your hot cousin or your hot cousin's mentally disabled friend. The end of the commercial states that the game is rated E for Everyone.
• A Beany and Cecil episode featured Cecil in a commercial for "Herrings...the only smoke gefiltered to my distaste!"
• After the Bluey episode "Ghostbasket" revealed that the house in which the series had been set until then would be sold, a fake listing for it was placed on an actual real estate website. In this example, the advertisement is not shown during the show itself.

Real Life

• Big Bill Hell's is a particularly ruthless parody of car dealership commericials. The announcer freely admits that they sell overpriced cars that are total pieces of crap, but they know you're such a damn schmuck you'll buy them anyway. Wife-fucking threats, challenge pissing^note That's right, CHALLENGE PISSING!, and lots and lots of cussing are thrown in for extra spice. Special mention goes for the fact that this was made by actual marketing agency employees in Baltimore. It was created in 1990 for an "Ad Follies" contest held by several Baltimore-based marketing companies. Despite effectively putting their jobs on the line for this, the creators went through with it anyway.

---