Vintage Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear Ad from Japan

By
on

Everybody’s already seen this one, but did you know the Japanese also made Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear toys. Take note: this is how you do viral marketing!

Also in Cartoon Brew...

  • Mel Brooks Talks
    About Ernest
    Pintoff’s “The

    melbrooks-critic

  • Scooby-Doo Performs
    on Fox News

    scoobyfox

  • Meet the First
    (Stone Age)
    Animators

    cave-animation
  • Daev

    Your other toys will BOW DOWN to Huggin’ Bear!

  • startstop

    Wow.

    I love it when life imitates art. Though, I have seen much better Japanese cartoon drawings than the still they include in the commercial!

  • http://jessicaplummer.blogspot.com Jessica Plummer

    Oh wow…viral marketing indeed! Sneaky sneaky…

    Bonus points for the dying VHS look.

  • http://www.kyleink.com KyleInk

    Too good to actually exist…

    But I’ll tell you this much- I already want one.

  • Pincushion12

    It’s quite good, aside from the horrible attempt at drawing anime style. It looks WAY off and like a bad stereotype that gives itself away, immediately.

    If they did their research, they would have known that the actual drawings, to be accurate to Japanese commercials, would have had to be made entirely of rigid, geometric, heavily and boldly outlined shapes that tend to be perfectly symmetrical.

    They should have done more research on art styles featured in Super Milk-Chan, and Sanrio’s Hello Kitty if they wanted this to look plausible.

    It never ceases to amaze me how everytime other countries aside from Japan try to imitate “anime-style” they always get it ridiculously wrong.

  • Jonah Sidhom

    Pincushion12: When I first saw that drawing I figured they were going for that cheap-local-commercial-the-owner-got-his-son-to-draw-a-cartoon-character look. I’ve never been to Japan, but my guess is they have them there too.

  • startstop

    @Pincushion12
    Pixar, who’s fans know for “doing everything right”, probably wanted to draw the anime style bad on purpose. I can’t think of any other alternative. There are bound to be countless artists working there who can indeed draw like that!

  • matt

    Pincushion – It never ceases to amaze me how some people miss the overriding point – sure the animé version isn’t perfect – if it was and there was no ‘wink’ to the audience, the whole exercise would be completely redundant as the reason for doing a fake ad would be gone in that it would have done its job TOO well. I understand that you have an agenda and why, but don’t let it override your objectivity! That way you’ll be happier because in this particular case you’ll get the joke/fun of it. Fair? Cheers.

  • Viral Guy

    Pincushion12: If you can’t just watch this video and enjoy it for what it is, then I feel bad for you. I’m done with CB’s trashy comment threads.

    Peace

  • http://www.cementimental.com Tim Drage

    Well it’s not quite as badly executed as the one for Cloverfield anyway…

  • http://jaggedsmile.wordpress.com jaggedsmile

    Pixar has knocked this one out of the park! I swear, they have implanted false memories in my brain of having seen this commercial as a kid, they were so spot on in capturing the 80s feel. Bravo!

  • http://www.wolfmovie.com/contribute/positions.php Le Furry Enrage

    Another funny thing about these “ads” is that the toy is a goofy-looking but otherwise very generic teddy bear: a basic toy that’s not often advertised, not the kind of gimmicky toy that accounts for most TV toy commercials. That, I’m sure, the Pixar people are aware of, too, and, again, it’s part of the joke.

  • http://jaggedsmile.wordpress.com jaggedsmile

    But, Le Furry…it’s not JUST a bear…it’s a bear you can HUG!!! Think of the possibilities…the endless hours of play!

  • Kyle Maloney

    I wonder why they didn’t bother to mention his strawberry scent? both the character in the movie and the upcoming toy story collection release have this.

  • Stone

    if the point was to make it look genuine. the bad anime art doesn’t pull it off because it doesn’t actually look like poorly drawn japanese art. it’s a collection of cliches. it comes off more like a parody of americanese anime you’d see on deviantart…

    http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n232/_stone_/sonosheet_6_large.jpg

    THAT is legitimately poorly drawn art from Japan. their design and colors are still tight, however.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyVHsBGdbqs

    and those are legitimate japanese commercials from the 80′s

    in essence not nearly weird enough and not enough out of place pop music. haha.

    wow… major nerd alert. I apologize.

    love that 80′s vhs tape American commercial though. very tightly made.

  • http://www.eddiewong.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/arale_collage.jpgpurin

    BOW to Haguhagubear!

    The fake American one was a whole lot more convincing (I had fun showing it to people and then announcing it was a fake), but I feel this is less so.

    I think it was going for “wacky Japanese” without being authentically bizarre (to Americans) enough. Not only does advertising often uses a different cartoon style from regular anime, the picture they show looks anachronistic to me. It should be rounder, more 80s-ish, I think.

    Also, one thing I remember from looking at old concert and show footage is that Japanese stuff tends to look a lot nicer. Then again, we are dealing with ads that are supposed to have been sitting on someone’s taped-from-tv cassette for years.

  • Jonathan

    Meh. It’s easy to make something ‘go viral’ when you’ve got a mega-million dollar ad campaign working and you’re on the 3rd installment of a successful franchise. It’s more like pandering to your base – like when they show sneaks at comic-con, they know everyone there will be blogging about it. I’m more impressed when something indie comes out of left field and reaches a wide audience, or when it takes longer for people to figure out that something is a stealth marketing campaign.

    I like the fake VHS effect though, nice touch (and it wouldn’t have worked without it.)