Who says the only way to get a case of the creeps from your living room television is by tuning into old Twilight Zone episodes or staring directly into Nancy Grace's shrill Medusa-like face? Some of the most spine-twisting and stomach-churning moments don't happen on your favorite TV shows. They happen in between them.
Source: Palm, Inc.
10. Jack, the Jack in the Box CEO
Source: Jack in the Box Inc.
Clowns are scary enough on their own. They don't need image enhancements. They need a full-blown facelift with a shovel. But Jack takes coulrophobia to an untreatable level. It's a clown with a giant globe head with the most inhuman looking face on a human body since Gary Busey. And he's everywhere. Every commercial features him in some new setting doing something that only someone with an inordinate amount of power, money, and resources can do. So he's not only got the looks of pure evil, but the money and resources of pure evil. He's his own axis of evil.
9. The Palm Pre Chick
Cell phone ads are supposed to convey a message of hope for the future, that new technologies will help usher in a new age of enlightenment and understanding. The only thing the Palm Pre ads convey for the future are a recurring series of night terrors and ruined bedsheets. And that's the way the ad agency likes it! Modernista, the agency that created the creepy girl ad campaign, said they love that so many people are talking about their ads. So apparently if you create an ad campaign that features elves being tossed into a wood chipper and everyone talks about it, then you've done a good job. That concept only works if the product you're selling are wood chippers.
8. Ronald McDonald
Source: McDonald's
Only adults can smell evil. That's why one of the world's most iconic and beloved clowns by children slowly turns into one of its scariest the older you get. The McDonald's spokes-face has the kind of mug that even clowns find creepy, spends more time with a random group of rotating children than most public school teachers, and (worst of all) has the ability to control magic. So if you're on his set, don't badmouth the new Southern Style Chicken Sandwich when the cameras stop rolling or you'll turn that supposedly never-ending frown upside down and make you one of the 70 million who are literally served to his customers.
7. The Quiznos Singing Rodents
Two genetic mistakes that appear to be rodents with bad teeth, even for street rats, singing about the joys and happiness that come from a discounted sub is a weird concept. But the design of these nightmare stars really sticks in your mind harder than a poorly thrown javelin. It's hard to imagine exactly what was running through the minds of the ad agency who came up with this ad concept. Then again, anyone who has ever been through college or Vietnam can probably guess.
6. Mr. Six, the Dancing Six Flags Guy
Source: Six Flags, Inc.
Here's the challenge: your amusement park franchise is sinking. You need to make your customers feel as though they are welcome and taken care of when they enter your businesses. What do you do? The last answer to that question should be, "Prop up a creepy old guy who looks like everyone creepy old guy in every neighborhood in America in front of the camera who never talks and expresses every emotion possible through dance." Six Flags recently upgraded the creepiness factor by giving Mr. Six...(gasp!)...a voice! Now Hell officially has a new elevator music DJ.
