The attraction of the middle school boys to the Axe ads is kind of creepy, considering that the ads aren't saying "girls will like you" but instead "many girls will have lots of sex with you". Are preteen boys these days just skipping that sweet "starting to like girls stage" and jumping right into wanting to get laid or is the sweet stage getting pushed back to, like, age 9?
Sixth grade boys are wearing cologne to attract girls? I thought the 'cooties' stage didn't end until eighth grade or so.
I was in grade school when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, but I would say that by 6th or 7th grade I was completely over the "cooties" thing and was getting really interested in girls stage.
What would he need Axe for, with Adelaide dying on the vine? Whereas Sky even gets wossname from the Salvation Army totally smashed and still can't close the deal.
Axe puports to make those who are not one already into a 'player'. Sky Masterson is, despite his troubles with Sarah, clearly a player. Nathan Detroit, conversely, is whipped. He is a guy who is only doing it for some doll. This is the very demographic that Axe is targeting.
21: You're criticizing Guys and Dolls for being untrue to the psychology of the typical gambler besotted with a Salvation Army lassie? It may be weird, but it's clearly what happened in the movie.
But ND, assuming for the sake of argument that he is whipped, is not trying to become a player. And considering that he's the organizer and sole proprietor of the oldest established permanent floating craps game in new york, I think he's not completely not a player already.
True, Nathan has made something of himself. I suppose I mean the teenaged Detroit, pre-success. The underlying persona, not the person who made it in spite of his inherent lameness. ND at 15 would have been all over the Axe.
I proudly wore CK one at the urging of my seventh-grade girlfriend. (Yes, I, too, was in seventh grade at the time.) This scenting seems less shameful, because I wasn't responding to some silly ad campaign, but more shameful, because it was CK one.
Yeah, it was 7th-8th grade when I started to like girls in some definable way. And I think wanting to get jumped = having sex to you, Becks, but not (or not clearly) to a 6th grader.
I'm picturing the Old Spice in a window-front box, with a little label saying "In emergency, break glass."I'm picturing the Old Spice in a window-front box, with a little label saying "In emergency, break glass.".
I love my wife, but she is five feet tall of pure mean when riled. I am not nearly brave enough to do what you suggest.
I've actually been mystified by a couple of them, although I can't recall them well enough to explain what I didn't get. But there have been subway rides where I've spent 20 minutes with my head cocked to one side, trying to figure out the improper signification of some object in an Axe ad.
That was what happened with me and the plastic cups! Weiner, it's a bed, in a barren looking room, and by the bed is a nightstand with two stacked horizontal layers of plastic cups (so there could be something in them; the cups are not inside each other). I thought, wrongly, that the cups were for spitting sperm into.
If you use our product, you'll have so much sex that there won't be time to run to the kitchen for refreshments. But the obvious and efficient thing to do is to then have sex in the kitchen! I'm not satisfied by my answer.
My favorite ad was one I saw in Italy, which featured a carton of orange juice in full focus and a couple having sex in the blurry background. Look at the juice, look at the sex. Look at the juice, look at the sex.
Feh, I was mostly right at the very beginning in 42. Is the idea that you know you won't be leaving the bed, so you plan in advance?
I also record that my dinner finished cooking at the exact time my internet connection crumped out, which I should take as a sign from above to get to work.
I think I saw the one in 37 on the side of a bus stop in New York.
My sources inform me that above ground in NYC Axe is now running a different bunch of ad campaigns, featuring people you wish you hadn't slept with and people who prevent you from sleeping with other people.
The campaign discussed in 66 is also below ground, on television, and on those thingies which are placed around coffee cups to prevent one's fingers from being burned.
Having seen the ad, I think 71 gets it. It's the scent (or whatever it does) that is longer lasting, but it wants to lead you to make the leap to thnking that it has the same effect as Viagra, and that you will have to lay in supplies for the next time you bring a woman home.
Must be nice; I find that a Tic-Tac is more than enough supplies.
I'm so clueless that a) I had never heard of Axe before the Unfogged gathering; b) I had never noticed an advertising campaign on the subway for any kind of cologne; c) I left the gathering with the impression that 39 was probably the better interpretation of the ad.
The problem with the sperm interpretation is that, given the size of each cup, you would have to release a volume of sperm roughly equivalent to the volume of your own body to justify that many cups.
"I was watching the commercial, and there was this guy and he was mobbed by a bunch of girls, and I thought, 'Wow, that's tight! ' " said Asean Townsend, 12. "So I went to CVS and bought it."
Aren't our 12-year-olds even a little bit cynical? Jeez.
When I was their age I wouldn't even have understood most of those ads. </Grandpa Simpson>
Can anyone link to a picture of the one with the plastic cups? I wanna see if I can figure it out.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:08 PM
This makes A White Bear cry. On the other hand, one sure way to stamp out the popularity of anything is to get it into the hands of sixth graders.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:09 PM
1: Well, that's because you're over 24, Grandpa. (not a link to the ad in question, though)
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:17 PM
Kids these days! $10 a month? Spoiled rotten, says I!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:29 PM
Sixth grade boys are wearing cologne to attract girls? I thought the 'cooties' stage didn't end until eighth grade or so.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:34 PM
I got a dollar a week.
Also: dice? A burgeoning Nathan Detroit, apparently.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:35 PM
5- I know girls are entering puberty younger. Are boys as well? And why is that anyway? (I know I could look it up, but thought I'd ask here.)
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:39 PM
Poncey!
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:39 PM
Crap. I meant to link here.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:40 PM
Nathan Detroit didn't need Axe.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:42 PM
9: the linking issues continue.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:44 PM
The attraction of the middle school boys to the Axe ads is kind of creepy, considering that the ads aren't saying "girls will like you" but instead "many girls will have lots of sex with you". Are preteen boys these days just skipping that sweet "starting to like girls stage" and jumping right into wanting to get laid or is the sweet stage getting pushed back to, like, age 9?
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:45 PM
4: Hey, PK gets $10 every payday (i.e., every two weeks.) Dude, inflation.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:46 PM
Sixth grade boys are wearing cologne to attract girls? I thought the 'cooties' stage didn't end until eighth grade or so.
I was in grade school when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, but I would say that by 6th or 7th grade I was completely over the "cooties" thing and was getting really interested in girls stage.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:46 PM
Well, okay, but were you buying cologne in an atempt to attract them? Because that just seems weird.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:50 PM
I can see Nathan Detroit needing Axe. Sky Masterson, though? Never.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:51 PM
What would he need Axe for, with Adelaide dying on the vine? Whereas Sky even gets wossname from the Salvation Army totally smashed and still can't close the deal.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:53 PM
When the 6th grade boys aren't all wearing Axe, is the smell of middle school any less intolerable?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:54 PM
Unless that "If I were a bell" song is supposed to be a double entendre.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:54 PM
Out of respect for the unintentionally intoxicated, rather than insufficient cologne, though, wasn't it?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:56 PM
He intoxicated her intentionally, and without her realizing it, though, so it's a bit weird for him suddenly to have a fit of scruples.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:57 PM
Perhaps it depends on whether 6th grade is the beginning of middle school or the end of elementary school.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 4:57 PM
Axe puports to make those who are not one already into a 'player'. Sky Masterson is, despite his troubles with Sarah, clearly a player. Nathan Detroit, conversely, is whipped. He is a guy who is only doing it for some doll. This is the very demographic that Axe is targeting.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 5:00 PM
21: You're criticizing Guys and Dolls for being untrue to the psychology of the typical gambler besotted with a Salvation Army lassie? It may be weird, but it's clearly what happened in the movie.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 5:00 PM
"Unfogged Meetups: Always on the cutting edge."
Was that because this was a topic of discussion at the meetup, or because breathing was difficult due to all the men wearing AXE?
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 5:02 PM
25: Yes.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 5:03 PM
But ND, assuming for the sake of argument that he is whipped, is not trying to become a player. And considering that he's the organizer and sole proprietor of the oldest established permanent floating craps game in new york, I think he's not completely not a player already.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 5:10 PM
True, Nathan has made something of himself. I suppose I mean the teenaged Detroit, pre-success. The underlying persona, not the person who made it in spite of his inherent lameness. ND at 15 would have been all over the Axe.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 5:20 PM
Also, I just now realized that the school in question is about 5 minutes from my house. I'm so proud of my hometown.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 5:22 PM
I proudly wore CK one at the urging of my seventh-grade girlfriend. (Yes, I, too, was in seventh grade at the time.) This scenting seems less shameful, because I wasn't responding to some silly ad campaign, but more shameful, because it was CK one.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 5:28 PM
Well, okay, but were you buying cologne in an atempt to attract them?
I would have if I had thought that it would have helped. I was just too dim to consider it (I never have been much of a player).
But if my wife ever dumps me (as my wives have tended to do), I've got a bottle of Old Spice ready to go. That would help, right?
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 5:36 PM
1) Players have no shame, or alternatively, not enough shame to possibly die due to it.
2) ND "Gotta have the game or [he'll] die from shame"
3) ND is not a player
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 5:37 PM
Yeah, it was 7th-8th grade when I started to like girls in some definable way. And I think wanting to get jumped = having sex to you, Becks, but not (or not clearly) to a 6th grader.
Also, if true, #31 is really funny. Not quite "I would have been out by now," but still funny.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 5:55 PM
re: 33
31's all true.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:00 PM
I'm picturing the Old Spice in a window-front box, with a little label saying "In emergency, break glass."
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:03 PM
I'm picturing the Old Spice in a window-front box, with a little label saying "In emergency, break glass."I'm picturing the Old Spice in a window-front box, with a little label saying "In emergency, break glass.".
I love my wife, but she is five feet tall of pure mean when riled. I am not nearly brave enough to do what you suggest.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:08 PM
wanting to get jumped = having sex to you, Becks, but not (or not clearly) to a 6th grader
That was the sentiment behind 1. I would have been, like, a refrigerator full of whipped cream? What does Axe have to do with sundaes?
I had to explain that ad to, I think, my parents. Mysteriously, I am not dead of embarrassment.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:15 PM
I've actually been mystified by a couple of them, although I can't recall them well enough to explain what I didn't get. But there have been subway rides where I've spent 20 minutes with my head cocked to one side, trying to figure out the improper signification of some object in an Axe ad.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:19 PM
That was what happened with me and the plastic cups! Weiner, it's a bed, in a barren looking room, and by the bed is a nightstand with two stacked horizontal layers of plastic cups (so there could be something in them; the cups are not inside each other). I thought, wrongly, that the cups were for spitting sperm into.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:23 PM
(and it was literally months of pondering that led me to that incorrect conclusion)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:25 PM
Right. That one left me entirely at sea. Does anyone more adventurous have an explanation?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:25 PM
Huh. Sustenance, because you never leave the bed?
No wait, let's do it as a two-minute mystery. Are the cups, in fact, empty?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:26 PM
If no one knows, this two-minute mystery is going to totally suck in a non-sex act related way.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:27 PM
Oh, so these ads are on subways? I was wondering why I'd never seen them.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:28 PM
Well, I know what they told me at the meet-up. But who knows, maybe they're wrong too.
I think, based on the pattern of other axe ads, they aren't empty. For example, one sees the fridge full of whipped cream.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:29 PM
Do they contain a substance that is usually eaten?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:31 PM
Oh, so these ads are on subways? I was wondering why I'd never seen them.
I ride the subway pretty much every day, and I do not remember seeing them. But that may be a testimony to my obliviousness rather than anything else.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:31 PM
No.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:31 PM
Or drunk?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:32 PM
That is usually drunk?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:32 PM
yes.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:33 PM
Water, for rehydration?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:33 PM
Armsmasher is teh winner!
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:34 PM
That doesn't even seem dirty, though. If you use our product, you'll have enough sex that you'll get thirsty?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:34 PM
It's an awful lot of water, LB.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:36 PM
If you use our product, you'll have so much sex that there won't be time to run to the kitchen for refreshments. But the obvious and efficient thing to do is to then have sex in the kitchen! I'm not satisfied by my answer.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:37 PM
One cup for each person in the room?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:38 PM
My favorite ad was one I saw in Italy, which featured a carton of orange juice in full focus and a couple having sex in the blurry background. Look at the juice, look at the sex. Look at the juice, look at the sex.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:39 PM
And the neat stacking -- also odd. I'd think if that were the message you wanted to convey you'd be going for some sort of Gatoradeseque sports-drink.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:42 PM
The meaning of the word Mannschaftarbeit.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:48 PM
Feh, I was mostly right at the very beginning in 42. Is the idea that you know you won't be leaving the bed, so you plan in advance?
I also record that my dinner finished cooking at the exact time my internet connection crumped out, which I should take as a sign from above to get to work.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:50 PM
And the neat stacking -- also odd. I'd think if that were the message you wanted to convey you'd be going for some sort of Gatoradeseque sports-drink.
Maybe it means that Axe is for you if you've got OCD and need to drink precisely five and one-third glasses of water each time you ejaculate.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:50 PM
Nothing comes between guys and balls.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:50 PM
I ride the subway pretty much every day, and I do not remember seeing them.
So where are Tia and LB seeing them?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:51 PM
We're more attentive to our surroundings? Or have dirtier minds, and thus pay closer attention to puzzles with a sexual element?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:54 PM
I think I saw the one in 37 on the side of a bus stop in New York.
My sources inform me that above ground in NYC Axe is now running a different bunch of ad campaigns, featuring people you wish you hadn't slept with and people who prevent you from sleeping with other people.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 6:56 PM
That sounds more like their TV ads, which I've always thought were irritatingly straightforward (hence my puzzlement: enigmatic ads? for Axe?).
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:00 PM
It took a long time to find this I hope you're all happy. The last comment seems right.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:05 PM
"this. I"
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:05 PM
re: 65
Both of those seem plausible to me.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:06 PM
I suppose the emphasis is on "longer lasting."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:07 PM
Yeah, with the 'water stop at a marathon' image, which I hadn't figured out, it makes sense.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:08 PM
71 reminds me that the first time I saw the Axe campaign, I was half convinced that it was an aerosol erectile dysfunction aid.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:08 PM
The campaign discussed in 66 is also below ground, on television, and on those thingies which are placed around coffee cups to prevent one's fingers from being burned.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:11 PM
re: 68
Having seen the ad, I think 71 gets it. It's the scent (or whatever it does) that is longer lasting, but it wants to lead you to make the leap to thnking that it has the same effect as Viagra, and that you will have to lay in supplies for the next time you bring a woman home.
Must be nice; I find that a Tic-Tac is more than enough supplies.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:12 PM
a Tic-Tac is more than enough supplies
And flares, of course.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:15 PM
You forgot the beets.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:17 PM
Damn, that should have been a link.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:19 PM
re: 76 and 77
Flares and beets? I just do not understand what you young people get up to.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:20 PM
Probably hasn't changed that much since you were in sixth grade.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:23 PM
I think the beets may be a joke. The flares, however, are because safety comes first.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:24 PM
because safety comes first
Not when I get it on with safety...
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:26 PM
I'm so clueless that a) I had never heard of Axe before the Unfogged gathering; b) I had never noticed an advertising campaign on the subway for any kind of cologne; c) I left the gathering with the impression that 39 was probably the better interpretation of the ad.
Posted by Chris | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:28 PM
You're supposed to put one white feather in each cup, Chris. When no empty cups remain, you will be fully revealed.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:34 PM
Oh, that made me giggle shyly.
Posted by Chris | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:38 PM
The problem with the sperm interpretation is that, given the size of each cup, you would have to release a volume of sperm roughly equivalent to the volume of your own body to justify that many cups.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:51 PM
If you were any kind of man, Wolfson, that wouldn't seem so incredible.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:53 PM
And that made me crack up.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 7:55 PM
Maybe it's a woman's bed. A woman who hijacked a schoolbus full of Axe-wearing sixth graders.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 8:17 PM
Wouldn't that need a pile of lunchboxes and bookbags strewn lewdly in the background?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 8:23 PM
Regarding this:
"I was watching the commercial, and there was this guy and he was mobbed by a bunch of girls, and I thought, 'Wow, that's tight! ' " said Asean Townsend, 12. "So I went to CVS and bought it."
Aren't our 12-year-olds even a little bit cynical? Jeez.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 8:44 PM
Ohmygod
I was watching the commercial, and there was this guy and he was
like weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 9:16 PM
My favorite part was Richard Thomas representing strife.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04- 3-06 9:20 PM
I figured the dice were 12-sided.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 04- 4-06 8:23 AM