I have no idea what the story is behind this, and I’m sure it’s available, but I’d rather keep the one that’s in my head, which is related to a possible future of advertising: give a production company a bunch of money, a few simple guidelines like “show the damned product, maybe being used,” and get a spot that you can use online.
In this case (spoilers!) it’s a car company, and since you really only get one shot at this, I’m hoping this means the director fulfilled a childhood dream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmCTtom62HM
Telling ten year old me that this would be A Thing would’ve been a tough sell, but mostly the “and you’ll watch it on something called an iPad, which is kind of a glass clipboard that doesn’t have any wires coming out of it?” part.
Fun fact: while not so much “researching” as nostalgically procrastinating, I found an archived history post by Mark Evanier, who developed the show:
The kids were all heroic — all but a semi-heroic member of their troupe named Eric. Eric was a whiner, a complainer, a guy who didn’t like to go along with whatever the others wanted to do. Usually, he would grudgingly agree to participate, and it would always turn out well, and Eric would be glad he joined in. He was the one thing I really didn’t like about the show.
So why, you may wonder, did I leave him in there? Answer: I had to.
…Consultants were brought in and we, the folks who were writing cartoons, were ordered to include certain “pro-social” morals in our shows. At the time, the dominant “pro-social” moral was as follows: The group is always right…the complainer is always wrong.
This was the message of way too many eighties’ cartoon shows. If all your friends want to go get pizza and you want a burger, you should bow to the will of the majority and go get pizza with them. There was even a show for one season on CBS called The Get-Along Gang, which was dedicated unabashedly to this principle. Each week, whichever member of the gang didn’t get along with the gang learned the error of his or her ways.
We were forced to insert this “lesson” in D & D, which is why Eric was always saying, “I don’t want to do that” and paying for his social recalcitrance. I thought it was forced and repetitive, but I especially objected to the lesson. I don’t believe you should always go along with the group.
…What a stupid thing to teach children.
Anyway, the commercial people skipped that part, and nailed the rest:
