Thursday, July 09, 2009

Tha Cube

So like I said, I've been watching a lot of Hulu lately (halfway thru season 1 of Angel now). And one of the commercials they're playing a lot of lately is for the Nissan Cube.

And like I guess every car commercial nowadays, the Cube commercial includes the disclaimer "Professional driver on closed road. Do not attempt."

You see this all the time on commercials where the car is zooming along a winding road, cornering at high speed, or tearing across a desert kicking up huge plumes of sand in its wake. It makes sense there.

But in the Cube commercial (you can see the long version of the commercial on the Cube's website here), not only does the car not do anything even remotely dangerous, but the car is never actually driven on screen, as far as I can tell.

A guy gets into a Cube, then we see a miniature Cube being pulled along a moving road at a sedate speed. Not only is it not a real car, but the wheels never even turn. The only times we see the real car are when people are shown getting in and out (and I find the brunette in the white tremendously appealing in a low-key, distracted way), and it's parked then.

So do they include the disclaimer as a joke, or is our society now so hyper-litigious that we have to include disclaimers warning people not to emulate behavior exhibited by a model car that never actually even moves?

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