Dogs and cats might be notoriously volatile company, but we've already established that there's no reason why they can't get along, so long as there's sufficient quantities of J2O to go around. If you're looking to promote your product as the kind of universally agreeable artefact around which consumers from all backgrounds and walks and life can find common ground, then having a couple of infamously antagonistic species seeing eye to eye on the matter can make for a persuasive metaphor (see also: that Coca Cola ad where a polar bear and a seal are able to put aside their differences with said effervescent beverage). But when your advertising campaign derives from the assumed harmony two traditional best buds who may, in actuality, be anything but, there's likely to always be a layer of unintentional discomfort nestled at the centre. In other words, don't copy the example of the following campaign.
When I was a child, there was a popular misconception that guinea pigs made better companions for rabbits than other rabbits, and it was common to see the two housed together. This was slightly before the era when neutering rabbits became standard procedure; groupings between males and females were obviously a huge no, while social aggression in same-sex groupings could be a more challenging issue for rabbit owners to have to rein in, so circumventing the problem altogether by having your rabbit shack up with a cavy was seen as an ideal life hack. I mean, they're both herbivores; what's the worst that could happen? Needless to say, nowadays it's not encouraged - rabbits and guinea pigs are both highly social animals, but they are very different social animals, and they thrive on the companionship of their own kind, not some alien species whose various signals and/or vocalisations are going to mean nothing to them. Also, since the rabbit tended to be the bigger and brawnier participant in such groupings, the guinea pig was unlikely to have very much leverage in the situation, and there was a very real risk that, if things did turn nasty, the rabbit could do some serious damage to the guinea pig with those enormous hind legs of theirs. Finally, rabbits are vectors of certain respiratory diseases that, while harmless to other rabbits, can be fatal to guinea pigs. All in all, keeping them together is not a smart idea. So it would be an unfortunate thing if any prospective pet owners were negatively influenced by this light-hearted Blockbuster Video campaign from the early 00s, which centred on the residents of 173 Jefferson Avenue - Ray, an overly-excitable guinea pig, and his long-suffering straight man roomie, a Dutch rabbit named Carl. Ray gets on Carl's nerves in just about every installment, so in reality this arrangement would probably have ended in bloodshed, but here the ill-matched critters (CGI creations animated by Tippett Studio) were able to maintain some level of decorum through their one notable area of common interest - DVDs and their prolificness in the venue opposite. At this point VHS hadn't completely gone away, but DVD was very much the shiny new kid in town, and the campaign provides a window into a time when $14.99 for a used disc was considered an absolute steal.
What does stand out when watching the Jefferson Avenue campaign is how great a debt it blatantly owes to Budweiser's "Swamp Gang" campaign from just a few years prior. I don't think it's unfair to say that it constitutes an urbanised, more family-friendly take on much the same idea, in revolving around a bunch of sardonic talking animals with no actual logical connection to the product being hawked, just that they happen to be situated in close proximity to its signage, and clearly have nothing better to do with their time and their gift of the gab than to comment on it. (Bonus: Ray the guinea pig is frequently mistaken for a hamster by some viewers, much as the chameleons from the Budweiser ads were often mistaken for iguanas, because an awful lot of people are species-illiterate.) In Ray and Carl's case, they lived in the window display of a pet shop located directly across the street from a Blockbuster Video, so they were always alert to the latest deals and promotions. It seems a pretty safe assumption that neither Ray or Carl had accessed a VCR/DVD player in their lives, so the notion that they would be so excited over the release of Bad Boys II, or that they would attach so much hysterical importance to the knowledge that Blockbuster was giving away free vacations to lucky customers might be a testament more to the monotony of life in that pet shop than to the awesomeness of Blockbuster. (Very conveniently for continuity, Ray and Carl also never seemed to attract any
prospective buyers of their own - the fact that they were themselves purchasable stock came up in
only one ad toward the end of the campaign's cycle.) The ads were absurd, sure, but then most memorable advertising is in some way or another, and I'd wager that this intrinsic silliness was in no small way accountable for their appeal, which was considerable - the public, clearly not put off by the campaign's derivativeness, took Ray and Carl to their hearts, and the ads proved to be quite popular, despite their relatively short run. The original campaign ran between 2002 and 2003, but in 2007 saw a brief revival to promote Blockbuster's ill-fated Netflix rival, Total Access, albeit one made up of recycled footage from an existing promo entitled "Mouse Click", in which Ray and Carl attempt to get online by pounding repeatedly on a mouse (the kind more endemic to the pet shop ambience).
Blockbuster managed to secure some fairly prominent voice talent for the campaign, with Ray being voiced by Jim Belushi. Carl, meanwhile, was voiced by James Woods, whom you'll probably recognise as the voice of Hades from Disney's Hercules, and in a clever bit of casting, the mouse he abuses in the aforementioned "Mouse Click" spot was voiced by Bobcat Goldthwait, aka Pain, one of the two shape-shifting demons Hades was similarly fond of pummelling.
Although they were, in a way, just as far-out as anything involving the Budweiser lizards, the Ray and Carl ads largely forwent the self-consciously weird humor of their swamp-dwelling models in favour of gags centred around the Odd Couple dynamic between the two central characters, playing like miniature sitcoms about mismatched roomies who, in this instance, just so happened to be a rabbit and a cavy living in a pet shop window. Occasionally there might be a movie connection - in one ad, Ray annoys Carl by dancing to the song "Maniac" from Flashdance, while in another Ray attempts to act out a tribute to his purported favourite genre, kung fu, and incurs the wrath of both Carl and a team of ninja mice. Most of these gags seem entirely peripheral to Blockbuster itself, however - Ray and Carl could have lived across the street from a Starbucks and I'm sure the overwhelming majority of them (mainly hinged around the implication that the rabbit, like everyone else, barely tolerates the guinea pig) would require only minimal tweaking to have made every bit as much sense. On the other hand, there is an appealing irony in the fact that, for Ray and Carl, the Blockbuster storefront itself functions as their nightly entertainment, their shop window effectively being a giant television screen into which they can gaze and receive endless diversion (something evoked in the spot where Carl's ears function as antenna, and Ray has to adjust them to get a decent reception of the street beyond). With no first-hand access to the media in question, Ray and Carl could experience the thrill of the Blockbuster rental only vicariously, through the deals and offers afforded its patrons. I am not convinced that they necessarily understand what Bad Boys II is, but they bear nightly witness to the desire of the human urbanite to seek out a copy, riddled with scuffs and finger marks from the like-minded individuals who were there before them, for escapism from the drudgery of the brick and mortar that otherwise surrounds them. And that, ultimately, is what gives the campaign its unique flavour, despite the conceptual similarity to the Swamp Gang - the sense it captures of a vibrantly interconnected, yet indifferent and emotionally estranged urban world outside. If the Swamp Gang campaign depicts a humorous collision between the forces of nature and human consumerism, with Ray and Carl we see a world where, much like Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, man's connection to nature seems almost non-existent, with concrete dominating where wilderness once stood. Unlike the Swamp Gang ads, where the featured critters were usually spectators but would intermittently encroach on the human world by raiding the tavern or wrecking the neon signage, the animal kingdom has here been completely neutralised, the only specimens within range being entirely docile and safely contained in glass enclosures (they also go curiously unnoticed; I find it odd that no passers-by are stopping to enjoy the cute animals showcased right beneath their noses, seemingly more interested in the shiny discs being offered across the street). For some reason it is always night in Ray and Carl's world - likely to tie in with the tagline, "Make it a Blockbuster Night", but the lack of sunlight merely adds to that overwhelming sense of artificiality. Crucially, Ray and Carl are unable to interact with the world beyond their window,
only look at it, which mirrors the patrons' own relationship with the
kind of escapism Blockbuster is selling, suggesting that both worlds are implicitly characterised by a shared claustrophobia. I can't help but feel that Carl's excitement, on seeing the promise of a
prospective free vacation, is fuelled by the mere possibility of
escape being dangled before him, even if (as with most of the contest's real-life
entrants) it remains utterly out of his reach. (Note: the same scenario was recycled for a number of different promotions, and Carl went just as wild over the promise of a free Stuart Little 2 poster. The inconsiderate rabbit never did learn the value of knocking.)
The terribly depressing thing about reviewing this campaign from the vantage point of 2022 is that we all know it ultimately didn't have a happy ending. Blockbuster peaked in the mid-00s, with most of their stores not making it into the mid-10s, as the company found itself up to its neck in debts and increasingly overshadowed by the media behemoth it had once infamously pooh-poohed (in 2000 Blockbuster passed up an opportunity to buy Netflix outright, a decision that seems flagrantly poor with hindsight, but then Netflix weren't exactly making a killing at the time). The Blockbuster at Jefferson Avenue would have packed up years ago, meaning that the current residents of the pet shop opposite (assuming they too didn't go out of business in the interim) would being spend their days gazing at a laundrette or trendy coffee bar. Lots of exciting signage there, I'm sure. Ray and Carl themselves would sadly also be long gone (we can only hope they eventually wound up with owners more attuned to the risks of letting rabbits and guinea pigs mingle). Meanwhile, the ghost of Blockbuster lingers on as a quintessential touchstone of 90s nostalgia, a ubiquitous presence throughout many a Gen X-er and Millennial's halcyon days the world is suddenly mournful it allowed to die off. Nowadays, if you want to go back, you'll find you're in much the same boat as Ray and Carl, able to gaze longingly at that garish blue storefront through old pictures and YouTube uploads, but the cold barriers of time are keeping you firmly inside that sawdust-filled box. Maybe we're at the point where, like Ray and Carl, the mere (erstwhile) existence of such a brand is its own form of delirious fascination.
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