In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream “Get Back Here You Thieving Alien!”

I’m quickly realising that the Super Bowl ad break is as eagerly awaited as the match itself. I’ve lived in the US for 3 Super Bowls, and each time there’s the buzz, “I wonder what the [insert company here] ad will be this year?” It’s funny, I’ve only watched one Super Bowl (in my first year) and I was astonished that there were more ad breaks than (American) football. (Which is no bad thing, I’m not a huge fan of the sport, give me football–soccer–any day.)

All I do know is, some of the ads are funny, some are clever but most are crap (don’t get me started on the GoDaddy marketing campaign… what in the hell are they doing?). But today, as posted on Greg Fish’s World of Weird Things, there was a glimmer of Space Age hope from a tire manufacturer…

The moral of the story: if you are going to take a joyride over an alien planet/moon, don’t leave your buggy unattended.

In a previous article (One-Way Mission to Mars: Top 5 Items to Pack), I got all excited about packing a modified dune buggy for my one-way trip to Mars, and it looks like the tire manufacturer Bridgestone thought a razz in the dirt on an alien world was a good idea too. In today’s 30 second Bridgestone Super Bowl commercial, we see two astronauts taking a spin across the landscape with an assortment of cosmic imagery overhead. I won’t spoil the ending, but I thought it was funny (but let’s face it, this year’s competition wasn’t that stiff, unless you’re a 16 year old with a crush on Danica Patrick that is), so here it is:

Not bad! Certainly fun, especially with House of Pain’s “Jump Around” playing and rock-collecting astronauts having a boogie (nice choice if you ask me). There are the obvious science problems with the ad (is this in the Solar System? Looks like Jupiter hanging in the sky, but that means they are on one of Jupiter’s moons. There’s a small dust ring around “Jupiter” suggesting the moon is waaaaay out of the Jovian system’s ecliptic plane. And then there’s the gravity problem…), but I’m not going to sit here ripping shreds out of a high quality ad that actually worked hard to impress (only next time Bridgestone, give me a call, there’s always room for an astrophysicist on the set).