Our surrogate employers at Wrigley's Candystand have leaped on the Goodship Sudoku with a casino twist that we're sure will sell plenty of gum.
What the deal with Sudoku, man? If it weren't enough that everybody on the train in the morning is playing it, a few college buddies have expressed an interest in learning the game to earn some social clout. That's like playing Tetris to get laid. What's the correlation?
If somebody can give us a good logical explanation of why Sudoku has taken the nation by storm, we'll give you a present.
Apparently, this is what web design firms do during down time. Seemingly for our amusement and, in the process, to demonstrate their stellar design skills, 10mg interactive has offered up a stuffed bunny who needs surgery. With defibrillator, razor, scalpel and other surgery tools, those inclined can zap the bunny, cut him open and play with his intestines. Fun, huh? We're definitely calling these guys for our next project!
Wow. We just might have to start liking Agency.com and put that whole Subway deal behind us. But, maybe not since the Subway video-creating Agency.com is not the same as the London-based Agency.com that created this new work for British Airways' new Club World Cabin. While lushly displaying all the first class cabin's accouterments, visitors can play a game in which the cabin's features are explored while searching for a pair of airline tickets which, if found, enter one in a drawing. The drawing's winner receives two tickets in the Club World Cabin from London to New York and a stay at the Intercontinental Barclay Hotel. We entered. Twice.
OK, it's a slow news day around here so forgive us if we report the stunning news Playboy is going to set up shop in Second Life. Set to occur in June, details are scarce and Second Life Herald has a lot of questions such as will there be a virtual Mansion? Will the real world bunnies have anything to do with the virtual bunnies? Will there even be virtual bunnies? How many Playboy Bunny avatars will actually be fat, balding, middle aged gamer geeks getting their rocks off while staring at their virtual Bunny? Do tell, Hugh. Inquiring geeks want to know.
Riding the vertical social network trend, TitleRound, a new social networking site for men hopes to offer guys what they can't find on MySpace, Facebook and other broadly focused networks. We're told the site will provide "a centralized area where guys in their twenties, thirties and forties can communicate on a public and personal level about the topics and interests that matter to them, including sports, gear, entertainment, activism, business, sex and health." Probably a good thing. There's only so much time a guy can spend looking at and fantasizing about things he'll never get his hands on. At least with TitleRound a guy can win stuff through the site's Triple Crown baseball promotion.
Not completely ignoring a guy's primary needs, TitleRound also features a baseball hottie contest in which guys can leer at women dressed in baseball uniforms. Some things will never change.
Volvo thinks it's the only vehicle sound enough to transport buried treasure from the Caribbean to your home. We would've guessed armored car, private jet or pirate ship, but you know, whatever.
Indulge the automaker by digging around for the gold doubloons and car key they hid for a campaign collabo with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
If you're too jaded to do that, indulge us by playing Bill's game instead.
That's what we did. Why hunting down a stylistic inconsistency won out over doubloons, though, is anybody's guess.
Solving puzzles posited by cryptic voices just seemed like too much of a commitment. There are other things that demand our time.
Like Bloxie.
Candystand takes advantage of us. We know this. Whenever they send us a new game, we crack our knuckles and prepare to trash them.
Unfortunately we can't, because the games have gotten really freakin' good. No, scratch that. The Candystand folk are just mighty talented at isolating classic standbys (ping pong? Come on) and appropriating them for their own maniacal purposes. Consider Bloxie, a new concoction that's had us stuck on stupid for at least a half hour.
If we could track how many hours we've lost on the Candystand website, we'd probably find we're putting in the same amount of time as a Wrigley's intern.
If you've ever harbored questions about the quality of your ad indoctrination, ease (or aggravate) those concerns with the TV Jingles Quiz from Mental Floss. We nailed 11/16 and lament the absence of the Whatchamacallit song, which was our favourite.
There's something deliciously twisted about feeling childhood fondness for a sales gimmick. Then again, what music isn't trying to sell you something? Even the Beatles are pushing shopping carts these days.
When we're presented the chance to launch ourselves out of a cannon to any destination in the world, we tend to get a bit excited. After all, that Outpost.com gerbil thing was pretty cool. Well after no less that 15 clicks and a seemingly endless collection of forms, buttons, drop down menus and a final challenge to enter personal information, our desire to hop inside the cannon quickly waned. For fuck's sake, marketers, if you're gonna offer up some silly time-waster, the least you could do is make it simple.
If you care, this whole cannon thing has something to do with Heineken, the UEFA Champions League Final and various prize packages. We know we're shirking our journalistic duties here but if you really want to see what happens when the cannon goes off, you'll have to slog through the site on your own,
This is how Murphy's Law works. Soon after we finish ranting about the plethora of racing games already floating about in the ether, another avails itself to us. This one, however, is special because it contains spiffy surprises that are revealed when you speed or otherwise misbehave (it's for an insurance company, after all).
And note the demented version of the benign but neurotic Chevron persona.
We are not amused. Why doesn't anyone make gaming variations of Tetris? Those blocks have nothing to do but serve as ad space. And the Tetris-obsessed have nothing to do but stare at the blocks. Consider the marketing opportunity.
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