A Great Place For A Stickup
Question: What is worse than a product slogan lodged in your brain for decades on end?
The Answer: When you've held onto that goofy ad campaign for all those years and then you finally run into a situation that calls for the product and it lets you down miserably.Thus begins my tale...
One thing that really annoys me about advertising is that sometimes it is the simplest, stupid bits that stick in your head. I'm sure everybody has their particular ad campaign that seared its way into your brain. It is the slogan that pops into your head without you specifically trying to recall it.
For me, one of those campaigns was for the air freshener product "Stickups." I couldn't tell you when those ads first invaded my brain. I assume I saw the commercials when I was kid watching TV. Needless-to-say, it has been a while. But the darn ads worked. I couldn't even begin to enumerate the instances in which their slogan or some variation there of popped into my head.
"This is a great place for a stickup."
Put me in a situation where a bad smell turns people's noses and I instantly hear that stupid phrase in my head. I even remember the basic commercial visuals: Various people encountering smelly objects and happily reciting the slogan and whipping out an air freshener to solve the problem and saving all of humanity. The one that most often pops into my brain was some sort of vampire popping out of a coffin or something like that.
I have no idea if they still run any ads for that particular product line. In fact, I was a little surprised to find that the product even still exists. What with all of the "plug-in" air fresheners these days. (Note: Some day, something very bad is going to happen to the person who created the campaign for the air freshener that produces a visible poof of air fleshiness.)
But low and behold, I was recently in another one of those darn situations where I found myself reciting in my head "This is a great place for a stickup." And I must say it was a place in dire need of fresh air. I was, for the ten gazillionth time, changing my daughter's diaper and I pressed the trashcan button with my foot to open the lid and before I could toss the offending diaper inside a even more offensive odor assaulted the room.
Side note: Yes, I know they make special doohickeys to deal with diapers and reduce odor. Diaper Genie, Diaper Champ etc. etc. Well, if you think they are so grand then just buy me one. Otherwise, stop interrupting the story and deal with the fact that we never bought one.
So, where was I? Oh, assaulted by odor. No sooner had my nose crinkled and eyes watered then that little voice in my head (Maybe I should name that voice one of these days: Leroy perhaps? Leroy sounds like a good name for the voice in one's head. Oh, sorry. Anyway...) says "This would be a great place for a stickup."
I almost expected to look down in my hand and find one of those little magic disks of air freshness waiting to save the day. Unfortunately, the only thing I found in my hand caused the urgent need to wash my hands.
Fast forward a few weeks, and I'm at my local Target with my wife and daughter and we are looking for trash bags and other assorted items when I see the air freshener aisle (why is there a whole aisle for this stuff?) and again Leroy exclaims "This would be a great place for a stickup." Wait, no, actually he said "I wonder if that product still even exists?" So I wander down the aisle in search of a product that, despite being burned into my brain for decades, I don't think I had ever actually purchased.
At first, all I can find are products that plug into sockets and have fans or little midgets to blow the fresh scent throughout the room. Alas, the product is no more and my trashcan is destined to continue its smelly existence.
But then, just as I'm about leave the aisle, I see two small boxes of Air Wick Stickups! Low and behold, that good place for a stickup is going to get a stickup indeed!
Satisfied with my shopping prowess, I return to my wife with product in hand and visions of us happily changing diapers sans ugly odors. When we get home, I take the first opportunity available to open up my new purchase to put it to work for the good of all mankind and more importantly for the good of this kind man.
I take the little disk of freshness into the room, peel off the protective layer on the back of the stickup, press my foot on the trashcan lever to lift the lid and I gently press the stickup onto the underside of the trashcan. Victorious! God bless capitalism and those incessant advertising jingles.
And then, even before the trashcan lid can close, I watch in dismay as the stickup plummets to the bottom of the trashcan. I retrieve the disk and inspect the stick part of the product to see if I missed a protective layer that is preventing the up action of the product. I spend the next several minutes walking around the house peeling at it trying to figure out if there is some layer that really is sticky. None is to be found.
My wife, bless her, watches this whole scene in mild amusement. Or, at least I'll tell myself that she was mildly amused by the whole thing. Perhaps the voice in her head, which we will call Aretha for now because if my inner voice gets a name then her inner voice should too (it's called equality people!), was saying something like "Tsk, tsk, girl! You knew he was like this when you married him."
And so, after years of carrying around that silly product slogan in my head I'm left to conclude that the Air Wick Stickup does not, in fact, stick up. And I can't help but be a little bit sad to know that now after so many years of Leroy repeating that slogan.
Of course, my sadness of this new found information causes Leroy to start another one of his annoying habits. Singing snippets of bad songs from too many years ago that somehow vaguely fit the moment. In this case, Leroy sings the line "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" from Poison's Something To Believe In. Why Leroy didn't choose the same line from the much more palatable Against The Wind by Bob Seger I'll never know.
Posted by on 11/15 at 09:39 PM