Hip Hop Hamsters Jump the Shark

kia_soul_hamsters_robots.jpg

It’s really no surprise this latest Kia Soul Hamster ad from David & Goliath is getting a bad rap. After all, sequels rarely live up to the original. The first two outings in this campaign where original and amusing. Looking back at the first spot in this campaign, you can sense the originality in the concept.

Upon viewing the second spot, you can sense the progression of the campaign and the central characters from early onset hipsters to full blown hip hop stars of the hood. Sadly, the third outing has reduced the hip hop hamsters to caricatures of themselves. They’ve become the comic relief in a video game.

Now you’ve all probably witnessed the power of LMFAO’s Party Rock and how it can persuade even the most dance floor shy individual to cut loose and rip it up…usually with extremely embarrassing results. And that was probably part of the concept here. To bust up a battle with the power of dance. But it doesn’t work.

While you might be able to get a few nightclub assholes to stop being assholes when the DJ drops their favorite song, it’s going to take a lot more than Party Rock to stop an entire army of post-apocalyptic robots to lay down their weapons and kick up their heels as if their Cylon brains had suddenly been reprogrammed. We love you, David & Goliath but we ain’t buyin’ it.

And where do you go from here? Will the former neighborhood tough guys turned happy-go-lucky dance stars suddenly crash a My Little Pony party with Kool and the Gang’s Celebration?

Of course what do we ad critics know? The general public is going to love this!

Picture of Steve Hall

Steve Hall

RECENT ARTICLES

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

Grandparents who build real relationships with their grandchildren aren’t the ones who try hardest — they’re the ones who are most genuinely themselves in those relationships, who don’t perform grandparenthood but simply show up as a person the child finds worth knowing, and children are extraordinarily accurate detectors of the difference between someone who is interested in them and someone who is interested in the idea of being close to them

Grandparents who build real relationships with their grandchildren aren’t the ones who try hardest — they’re the ones who are most genuinely themselves in those relationships, who don’t perform grandparenthood but simply show up as a person the child finds worth knowing, and children are extraordinarily accurate detectors of the difference between someone who is interested in them and someone who is interested in the idea of being close to them

Global English Editing

Psychologists explain that happiness after 60 often arrives not as a feeling but as an absence. The absence of pretending. The absence of urgency. The absence of the persistent low-grade fear that you’re falling behind a race that never existed.

Psychologists explain that happiness after 60 often arrives not as a feeling but as an absence. The absence of pretending. The absence of urgency. The absence of the persistent low-grade fear that you’re falling behind a race that never existed.

Global English Editing

Children who were raised by parents who never expressed affection openly often carry these 9 emotional patterns into adulthood — and psychologists say this is the silent epidemic behind why so many people over 60 feel isolated even in full households

Children who were raised by parents who never expressed affection openly often carry these 9 emotional patterns into adulthood — and psychologists say this is the silent epidemic behind why so many people over 60 feel isolated even in full households

Global English Editing

I raised my children the way I was raised — with high standards, clear expectations and not much room for emotional mess — and spent my 60s learning that what I’d experienced as good parenting they had experienced as a home where being imperfect was quietly dangerous, and that the distance my youngest maintains isn’t rudeness or ingratitude, it’s just the amount of space she needed to finally feel safe

I raised my children the way I was raised — with high standards, clear expectations and not much room for emotional mess — and spent my 60s learning that what I’d experienced as good parenting they had experienced as a home where being imperfect was quietly dangerous, and that the distance my youngest maintains isn’t rudeness or ingratitude, it’s just the amount of space she needed to finally feel safe

Global English Editing

I’m 66 and I just realized I’ve spent my entire adult life cultivating the kind of personality that makes me easy to be around and impossible to actually know — and the loneliness I feel now isn’t because people don’t like me but because nobody has ever met the actual person beneath the performance

I’m 66 and I just realized I’ve spent my entire adult life cultivating the kind of personality that makes me easy to be around and impossible to actually know — and the loneliness I feel now isn’t because people don’t like me but because nobody has ever met the actual person beneath the performance

Global English Editing

Psychology says the most isolating experience in aging is not physical distance from others — it’s realizing that the stories that shaped your entire life are no longer relevant or interesting to anyone around you

Psychology says the most isolating experience in aging is not physical distance from others — it’s realizing that the stories that shaped your entire life are no longer relevant or interesting to anyone around you

Global English Editing