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The Tao of 'Rico,' Air New Zealand's Creepy Puppet Spokesman

October 29, 2010 at 8:39 AM | by | Comments (0)

Since you've already read our ultimate guide to the new premium seats on Air New Zealand, there's nothing substantive that you could expect to learn from the airline's new commercials. That's a good thing, since there is absolutely nothing substantive in the airline's new commercials. What there is however, is a weirdly accented muppet squirrel (??) who says things that are sexually risque.

We're not going to get into too many details because we've embedded all four videos below. Suffice it to say that the first two videos are slightly NSFW and that you should be discrete about letting coworkers overhear the dialogue. Seriously. "She's blowing you" is only #3 or #4 on the list of things that would have you blushing if your boss walked in. We're not making this up.

As for whether the commercials actually work or not: we're writing about them, so theoretically that's a win for Air New Zealand. On the other hand, and maybe we're overreacting here, don't you find the whole thing kind of disconcerting and uncomfortable? The naked safety video was vaguely unhygienic but it was mildly clever because flight attendants can never get people's attention, but naked ones sure do.

But if Creepy McScreamy was an unshaven guy saying the same things in the same accent—and supposedly the accent is the joke here, since he's not really saying what he's "saying"—it would still be ewww. So we understand why they had a stuffed animal reading the script but, honestly, that didn't really help. This is a replay of Finnair's creepy panda, which they insisted was cute, which wasn't. AdFreak seems similarly unamused.

Also, the first two videos are about 30 seconds too long, while the second two are a bit lengthier. Enjoy "The Complete Rico" collection below:

Related Stories:
· Suggestive squirrel pitches Air New Zealand [AdFreak]
· New Zealand Travel [Jaunted]
· Travel Advertising [Jaunted]

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