RCL3: “No Spill Chill” Gives Me The Chills

I’m sure most people who grew up watching television can recognize the overused, silly, cliché format of “As Seen on TV” product commercials. Personally, I know that every time one of these cheesy commercials came on, I spent more time laughing at the product than paying attention to the advertisement.

This specific commercial capitalizes on the format that so many commercials use: the black and white scenes, the popping text, the outrageous hypothetical situations, and the cheesy slogans and names.

This commercial for “No Spill Chill” (a really silly name, I might add), begins with exclamations “Oh no!” and “Oops!”, picturing multiple scenes where people over-dramatically struggle to carry an ice tray, spilling buckets of water on the floor and in the fridge.

This over-dramatization of the simple issue that is carrying a full ice tray from the sink to the fridge attempts to convince the viewer that this small problem is a life-threatening issue. Although this works for some products, carrying the ice tray is such a small issue for the general population that it becomes nearly impossible to establish this fantasy. Thus is the first of many shortcomings of this commercial.

Another cheesy trademark that this commercial implements is the use of colors; specifically the use of black and white to denote the sad, struggle that is now of the past thanks to the product, contrasted with the use of bright colors to showcase what the future can look like once the new solution is implemented.

This commercial also capitalizes on the simplicity of the product and the issue, marketing the use of the product as “simple” and “easy”  (the narrator even exclaims “WOW!” to emphasize this point) when in reality, the task of filling an ice tray is usually simple and easy in the first place.

One note is that although these commercials seem silly to me and many others, “As Seen on TV” ads oftentimes do not consider myself or people like myself (young) as a part of their audience.

Sometimes, it is older audiences that will be more convinced by these techniques that I see as silly, and that is oftentimes why older actors are shown more in these commercials: depicting people that might feel they have these problems in the commercial is definitely a technique to draw in a  specific audience and form a connection (as much as you can through a commercial anyways).

Yet for me personally, the opening scene of this commercial will make me laugh every time, no matter how shaky my hands get when I walk my ice tray from the sink to the fridge.