At The Commercials: AXE Actually Makes Something Good!

I normally associate AXE with really horrible commercials. You know, like the one I blogged about in the past that had Jamie Pressley talking about washing balls. (Get it? It sounds like she means a scrotum, ha! That's why it's funny, because it's about washing balls, and you think about like a scrotum instead of a body product.) And oh, they also had a delightful commercial with a guy spraying water out of his armpits.

However, AXE's new commercial with Kiefer is legitimately pretty clever. I didn't recognize his voice - I'm not a big 24 guy - so the reveal at the end was pretty good. Maybe AXE is taking a page from Old Spice's book and just focusing on actually producing good commercials.

At The Commercials: Axe washes your balls.

I have a couple thoughts about this commercial, and I'm sure you've been eagerly awaiting all of them. In no particular order:

- Much like my previous review of SoBe's oral sex commercial, this one is a little too "on the nose" for me. (Although, "on the tip" might be a better description.) Seriously, it's a gag revolving around the word balls. This two-minute version is shrunk (no pun intended) to 30 seconds on television, but even then, the joke wears thin by the end of the commercial.

- I am a fan of Jaime Pressly in this commercial. I don't mean her acting; I mean her look. She resembles Kelly Ripa in it, who I'm also a fan of, except that Ripa now has like 40 kids, and that's weird for me to think about. Pressly is playing a fake former tennis star in the commercial, which is confusing to me. Can't you just bill her as Jaime Pressly, hot actress? Why go through the subterfuge of having her be a tennis star?

- There is another version of this commercial that airs before 10 p.m., and on the more conservative networks. (i.e. NBC and FOX air the clean version during NFL games, but Adult Swim airs the "balls, balls, balls!" version.) This seems like a supreme waste of money to me, since the commercial doesn't make a ton of sense without the references to balls. If you want to see that version, you can click... on your television, because it's not on the Internet, it seems.

- People really like posting this video to YouTube. There are like six different versions of it, even though in most of them, the sound is so shitty you can't hear anything. People just love talking about balls, it seems. (Oh ho, now I make joke about balls too! Oh ho!)

Say no to stupid commercials

Axe smells horrible anyway.

Since I seem to be critiquing commercials lately, let's move on to Axe Body Spray. Shockingly, I didn't really mind their super-babe commercials, where guys spraying themselves with Axe were beset by hot women. They were so over-the-top (warning: in a foreign language because that makes it funnier to me) that they were hilarious. The people in my Women's Studies didn't share that opinion, as several would try to argue that some men seriously believed that it would work. But honestly, if you believe that Axe works like that, then I also have some pets.com stock to sell you.

Unfortunately, for some reason all of Axe's recent spots on ESPN during the NBA playoffs have been the same putrid commercial. Simple summary: Guy has armpits that shoot out sweat when he raises his arm, and Axe stops this. It is absolutely as disgusting as it sounds. What gives?

p.s. Just as I'm about to post this, I realize that it might not be an Axe commercial, and instead might be Tag. For the record, if it's tag, it sucks too. And the Right Guard shaving gel commercials with the jetpacking women.