Saturday, July 26, 2008

Do It Yourself Paranoia: Mothra Puts On The Onion Sombrero

You may have recently been exposed to a commercial for Coke Zero involving a disembodied tongue, eyeball, and brain, debating the merits of Coke Zero while a second tongue stands in the distance and watches...

No, this is not something that happened to me on LSD. It's a real commercial.

The thing ends with the brain breaking up the tongue/eyeball debate. He threatens to make the tongue eat dirt, and ends with this very peculiar threat to the eyeball:

"You are going to have to wear the onion sombrero. All. Day. Long. Señor."

I've seen the ad several times and I can confirm that yes, the brain does say "onion sombrero." At first I wondered if this was some slang term I simply hadn't heard before, like "Dirty Sanchez."

I think I have uncovered the secret of The Onion Sombrero. I think Coke is trying to launch a meme. It's a catchy phrase, and a Google search reveals that the phrase didn't exist prior to the commercial. And hey, if Google can't find something, it doesn't exist, right?

Long-time readers of this blog may recall my ongoing attempts to find a corporate sponsor. Given the underwhelming response to my entreaties, I've decided to attach myself to this meme while it's young... like a pilot fish attached to the Great White Shark of Coca-Cola's marketing department.

Thanks in advance Coke... in exchange for your unintentional generosity, I promise I won't mention that recent settlement where you paid out $137 million US to your shareholders regarding a little matter of stock price manipulation. Or at least I'll keep it to a minimum.

Time to sit back and rake in the Google-fueled attention!

And if Google brought you here (just like all those fine people looking for "Kat Von D Naked"), please... feel free to check out the rest of my blog. Who knows... you may end up accidentally having a good time.


2 comments:

stephzies said...

I'm pretty sure the onion sombrero = CONTACT LENSES!

jojo said...

The onion sombrero is an eyelid. A sombrero blocks out the sun. So does the eyelid. The onion makes the eye water so to relieve the sting, the eyelid closes over the eye. Also the onion has a semi-translucent skin like the eyelid. So the brain will punish the tongue by making it eat something bad-tasting (i.e. dirt) and punishes the eyeball by closing the eyelid (onion sombrero) so it cannot see.