TV On The Horror of Those Lips!
posted by on February 6 at 17:14 PM
In honor of Super Tuesday, where My Candidate beat up Your Candidate, thanks for asking (and depending on whom you are asking), I give you something else:
My hatred of The Dairy Queen Lips.
I hate the Dairy Queen Lips. They are the worst fast food mascot in the history of televised advertisings. Everything about The Lips is horrible. Everything.
You know The Lips—the talking CGI ones from the commercial. I can’t find a single image of them on Google, nor a sign of them on YouTube, so you’ll have to dredge it up from memory. Sorry about that.
But trust me. They are awful.
There was a time when Dairy Queen’s advertising—-its image—-was quaint, even adorable…
…and its ads have attained the height of ultra-swing….
Even The Lips weren’t so bad way back in the day (as it were), when they were confined to the Dairy Queen sign, like so…
Then you could hardly tell they were lips at all. They sort of looked like a liver upon which the words “Dairy Queen” were blasted somehow—or like a tulip drawn by a retarded Georgia O’Keefe. They were inoffensive. I hardly noticed them.
But then CGI happened, and some poor fool in the DQ marketing department conjured up the genius idea to animate The Lips and create of them Dairy Queen’s televised mascot. They gave The Lips a voice, and a “personality”, and, ugh.
First, The Lips are not a mouth—-with hollows and cheeks and uvuli and tongue—-make no mistake. It is just lips—-lips with teeth, and a voice somehow. Disturbing.
And the voice that comes out of The Lips is all wrong. It is a man’s voice. The Lips clearly belong to a hooker. They are Corvette-red and lip-gloss-shiny and curved and pouty and lipsticky—-hooker lips. They seem to say, “Oral sex, $20” not, “Burger and fries, $3.99.” What exactly is going on here? Are the lips transvestite? Transexual? David Bowie? A Republican Congressman? What exactly are you trying to say, Dairy Queen?
Also, there is no denying it, The Lips are way overmuch like the Rocky Horror Picture Show Lips—-those iconic red lips singing against a stark black background…
How DQ avoids a huge lawsuit? A mystery. And The Rocky Horror Lips do not, I say, do not, inspire me to think of popcorn shrimp. (“Where are the kids? Ahhhhhh!”—another disaster of advertising.) They lead me to think of perverts from outer space. And geeks.
Even the voice that comes out of the Rocky Horror Lips (a film teaming with transsexuals, let’s remember) is a proper WOMAN’S voice, as women’s lips should have. What is your excuse, Dairy Queen?
And I would like to ask exactly what Dairy Queen has to say about this, which Twizzler has been doing for twenty years or better…
Really now, Dairy Queen. I demand an answer. Plagarism is so unnatractive.
And the “animation?” The CGI that brings The DQ Lips to life? Well, it is not good. Not. Good. Instead of moving like a pair of manlips naturally should while discoursing upon the virtues of Chunky Blizzards, The Lips move like a cocker spaniel with partial facial paralysis trying to pry a boll of barbed wire out of its molars. It really makes me uncomfortable.
So, in conclusion, I hate the Dairy Queen Lips. They are all wrong. They are a total rip-off. They are tragically executed. They make me feel bad. I wish they would go far away. Thank you.
Can't you just get a Blogspot or Livejournal for your inane little personal diatribes?
Non - I thought it was a great post, blog posts aren't mandated to be exclusively mind crushing revelations. Maybe you should get your own blog for the same reason.
I honestly have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Then again, I don't think we have DQs around here.
@1 Respect the Adrian, beyatch!
Here here!
I ABHORE those lips. My roommate and I cringe every time they start their palsy-dance on the screen.
Calling them 'tragic' nails it pretty well.
I've never seen the DQ lips, the benefit of not watching all that much TV, but they sound pretty creepy. The fast food mascot that I have seen and that creeps me out is the Burger King King. It's just this guy in this oversized plastic head running around in a robe but it really creeps me out. I think that it's because of the fact that the expression on the mask never changes, it's always set in a demented grin. The fact that the king never says anything and the weird caricature like aspect of the whole thing creeps me out in a way that Jack from Jack in the Box, which is after all a man wearing a giant ping pong ball on his head, doesn't.
"Dairy Queen" is my new nickname for you, Adrian.
I agree - the lips are horrible.
I have also seen a Dairy Queen ad that described their Blizzard ice cream desert as "Legendary". I know that advertisements exaggerate, but come on.
I've also seen a Dairy Queen ad that claimed that their hamburger was a kind of trophy that you deserve for picking their product.
It's like they're having a contest to see who can come up with the most outrageous and ridiculous claim.
Oh, Dear!
I don't know how to break this to you without you running down the street screaming jibberish, but here goes.
The voice coming out of the lips at the beginning of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is Richard O'brien - a MAN.
Also known as Riff-Raff and the man who wrote the music for the show.
Have a nice day!
gong, gong, gong
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
get dried out a bit Adrian
I think there is a DQ in Kent, and the shakes are good
@9: You beat me to it. I've been in a cast for years (I once even performed with the Seattle cast when they came to Portland and needed a Magenta) and it's definitely Richard O'Brien. However, in the actual play, it's supposed to be sung by the woman playing Magenta, and was supposed to be sung by that actress in the movie as well. The lips are hers, by the way.
All that aside, the Dairy Queen lips are in fact rather disturbing. They still don't bother me as much as the Burger King king, though.
"they sort of looked like a hepatic liver." really? all livers look hepatic. because they are.
howdy! welp, by golly, please explain this to me?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mpEGuNIcPdg
The worst one is the DQ lips practicing the word "tortilla". I can't stand that one. It's the worst. Far worse than the cannibal shrimp one.
14: Agreed, and the cannibal shrimp ad is pretty fucking horrible.
Still, the lips make me want to die. I had a dream I learned the lips had run away from Zach Braff's face.
This makes everything so much worse.
@13
Indeed. A woman in the trailer, but a man in the intro. Which in of itself is a subversion of the dominant paradigm.
What a horrible trailer. Less would have been more.
@6,
When those ads first started, I thought the only proper conclusion would be for the BK King to hold up a butcher knife and hack his victim to death. Several commercials later, I've become convinced that he's meant to be creepy, evidenced by the obvious nervousness/fear of the people he approaches -- up to the point where he presents them with a burger rather than a chain saw.
It's things like this that make me glad I don't have a television signal.
I don't really know what they look like, b ut are these them?
http://www.itanimates.com/projects.html?project=commercials
I have to change the channel every time those lips come on with that Tortilla, nailed it line. It is annoying and I used to like DQ when I was a kid but can't stand them now. They have truly lost something I liked about them.
I Fucking Love You Adrian Ryan - Always
Their advertising hasn't been for shit since they let their licensing of Dennis the Menace lapse.
Love.
that was long...
i prefer the lips over the eskimo i guess...natives as mascots always makes me feel uncomfortable
Rocky Horror Lips:
Yes the voice is Richard O'Brien but the
lips themselves are (Dame) Patricia Quinns (Magenta).
Oh no! 80's flashbacks.....
I wonder if Amy Kate Horn checked the I.P. addresses, how many of these little love notes are actually Adrian posting under different names.
yes, amy. please, do that, and inform us all how many of these "are me posting under different names". i'd be fascinated. i'm sure we all would. and, non? GO to HELL and FUCK a SHOE, you intolerable turd.
Oh, Non, Non, Non...you poor thing. So desperate to show the slog community you have a penis on the outside and not being an actual prick yourself you can't help but type something idiotic.
sigh!
you dumbass!!
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