The news for penises: dachshunds and hot dogs, in a festival of phallicity.
From AdWeek back on 2/1/16, a delightful story, “Heinz Releases the (Adorable) Hounds in This Hilarious Super Bowl Commercial: David creates ‘weiner stampede’ [on the spelling weiner, see note below] to promote ketchup” By Kristina Monllos:
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Heinz’s Big Game spot is going to the dogs — literally.
The company today released its 2016 Super Bowl spot from creative shop David in Miami. The 30-second ad, part of a larger campaign called “Meet the Ketchups,” [on the name, see note below] is meant to introduce Heinz’s family of condiments to consumers and will air during the third quarter.
Of course, the company decided the best way to introduce said condiment family was to show a bunch of weiner dogs in hot dog costumes running to a family dressed in Heinz condiment costumes.
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Note: my vow to never watch Super Bowl games, even for the commercials, is once again validated. Really excellent commercials will, after all, find their way onto the net, as this one has, as a regular ad for Heinz condiments.
You can watch the ad, in both 30-second and 60-second versions, on the AdWeek site linked to above.
Note on the spelling weiner. In German, Wiener (with accented vowel /i:/) means ‘from Vienna (Wien in German), Viennese’ and has given its name to wiener the sausage and to wiener dogs, dachshunds, which look like hot dogs; meanwhile, Weiner (with accented vowel /aj/) is an old German surname meaning ‘wheelwright’ but could be related instead to Wein ‘wine’ or to weinen ‘to cry, weep’).
But that’s German. In English, the very common Jewish surname /wínǝr/ is sometimes spelled with etymological IE, sometimes with EI (as in the name of the (in)famous texting politician Anthony Weiner). (At the same time, common Jewish surnames almost always spelled with EI, like Bernstein, are sometimes pronounced with etymological /aj/, but sometimes with /i/. The history is obviously complex.)
The spelling variation for the English surname /wínǝr/ seems to have slopped over onto the name of the hot dog and the dachshund, which now often appear with EI instead of the etymological IE — as in the AdWeek piece on Heinz condiments.
Note on the campaign name “Meet the Ketchups”. Almost surely a takeoff on the movie title Meet the Parents.
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From Wikipedia:
Meet the Parents is a 2000 American comedy film written by Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg and directed by Jay Roach. Starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller, the film chronicles a series of unfortunate events that befall a good-hearted but hapless man while visiting his girlfriend’s parents. Teri Polo, Blythe Danner, and Owen Wilson also star.
Meet the Parents is a remake of a 1992 film of the same name directed by Greg Glienna and produced by Jim Vincent.
The movie led directly to another comedy. From Wikipedia:
Meet the Fockers is a 2004 American comedy film directed by Jay Roach and the sequel to Meet the Parents. The film stars Robert De Niro (who was also one of the film’s producers), Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Blythe Danner and Teri Polo. It was followed by a sequel, Little Fockers, in 2010.
Plot: Gaylord “Greg” Focker (Ben Stiller) and his fiancée Pam Byrnes (Polo) decide to introduce their parents to each other.
And, more indirectly, through the title, to yet another comedy. From Wikipedia:
Meet the Blacks is a 2016 American comedy film directed by Deon Taylor, written by Taylor and Nicole DeMasi, and is a parody of the 2013 film The Purge. It stars Mike Epps, Gary Owen, Zulay Henao, Lil Duval, Bresha Webb, George Lopez and Mike Tyson, and was released on April 1, 2016 by Freestyle Releasing.
Plot: After having stolen money from a famed criminal drug king (Charlie Murphy) and believing that he will be imprisoned for the next five to six years, Carl Black (Mike Epps) moves his family — consisting of his new wife, teenage daughter, vampire-wannabe son and fresh-out-of-prison cousin — to Beverly Hills, California on the same day when all crime becomes legal for a 12-hour period.
As far as the Heinz company is concerned, forget meeting the Blacks (not to mention te Fockers), and go for its Ketchups and Mustards
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