You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
Lay’s Potato Chips

The Promotion:

The Pitch:
If time loops came with an infinite variety of Lay’s flavors, maybe people wouldn’t be so eager to get out of them.

The 1993 film Groundhog Day didn’t invent the idea of the time loop – literary examples go back at least as far as the 1910’s, and the concept itself can be seen as playing off the idea of eternal recurrence found in Indian religions. But no other take on the idea has proven quite as influential on pop culture (unless you’re in Japan – then maybe it’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time).

Even when time loops are done in horror movies like Happy Death Day or action flicks like Edge of Tomorrow, you can see Groundhog Day‘s DNA in the mix (particularly when they do a montage of the lead character dying in various ways). And on television, any sci-fi/fantasy series that goes on long enough will almost inevitably do a “Groundhog Day episode” (though often taking many cues from Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “Cause and Effect” as well).

This isn’t even the first time a commercial has done a Groundhog Day homage (as we covered a few months back) – but where that was just a straight up nostalgia grab, this ad uses the time loop concept to create a fascinating examination of commercials’ formulaic nature.

Because, whenever you get a series of commercials with recurring characters, inevitably they’re going to be saying and doing the same things over and over and over again. There’s only so much room in your standard 15 to 30 second commercial slot, and they’ve got to fit both their running gag and the company’s standard pitch in there, with only slight variations. How many times has Flo had to say “Bundle and Save”? How often has the Trix Rabbit been told “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids”? Just how many shouts of “Dilly Dilly!” have echoed in vaguely Medieval style halls?

So the idea of a character who’s aware of the repetitive nature of their existence, that their time on Earth consists solely of going through the same routines again and again, with the only variable being the specific flavor of potato chips they’re promoting … it’s a fantastic example of absurdist, existential horror, halfway between Franz Kafka and Wile E. Coyote. Add in being the latest in a long tradition of commercials-making-fun-of-commercials, and it makes for one memorable and entertaining ad.

Happy Groundhog Lay’s to us all!