FBRZ

Before moving to Japan, I always liked to imagine that Japanese TV shows would be a cross between Takeshi’s Castle and Iron Chef. In reality, television here is far less entertaining, and seems to consist predominantly of carefully orchestrated panel shows and broadcasts which are so plastered with gaudy graphics and subtitles that I often feel as if I’m reading more than I’m watching when I sit in front of my TV set.

Thankfully, Japan’s primetime ads are usually far more quirky and entertaining. Take this recent commercial for odour-removal spray Febreze, for example, which features a giant, gurning sun dual-wielding bottles of the stuff.

I’ve never really understood people’s love of odour-eliminating products like Febreze. The way I see it, bad smells exist for a reason: they’re nature’s way of telling us to get as far away from the thing from which the whiff is emanating, lest it be hazardous to our health. If something’s so dirty, sweat-covered or old that it starts to smell, you either wash it or throw it away.

Still, the stuff does come in handy when you live in a shoebox apartment and everything from your couch to your curtains reeks of curry or kimchi following a particularly spicy cook-off, or after coming home from a bar with your one good dry clean-only suit smelling of cigarette smoke.

But why market your product by having people sniffing dirty things and saying how nice they smell when you can have a giant, talking sun emerging from the between the clouds like some kind of movie monster?

Take it away, Japan!

Thank you, giant sun! Now I don’t have to wash my bedsheets for another week!

Source/screenshots: YouTube – P&G Japan