Guinea Pigs Tackle Doritos Super Bowl Commercial
Image courtesy of Marcus DunnComputer animation was used to give the illusion of Chip the guinea pig enjoying all the goodness humans normally enjoy with a tasty Doritos snack.
The 30 second entry features a smart phone application (albeit made up) that allows an owner, lover and neurotic consumer of the orange, triangle chip to track their snack wherever it might be – “whether with the kids, the wife, or someone else in the family,” as the ad assures.
That someone else in the family happens to be Chip and Chewy, two cavies owned and “cared for” by Dunn’s kids.
“Actually, me and my wife do our share in caring for the piggys,” says Dunn. “And in doing so, I can honestly say I have become pretty attached to the little guys.”
Acquired just this past summer, after intense lobbying by two of their three children, Dunn and his wife relented in adding more pets to the family. The household already had a 100 pound chocolate lab, a gecko, fish and a hamster, which belongs to the child who didn’t lobby for the guinea pigs.
“Hamsters are pretty boring when you compare them to the active and attentiveness of guinea pigs,” said Dunn. “You can really see their personality.”
The use of guinea pigs was not in the original concept. Darden and Dunn first considered using the lab. But since last year’s Crash the Super Bowl winner used a dog, Darden was reluctant to use the same combination again.
“The concept was solid from the beginning but we really needed to come up with another pet or perhaps a guy in a gorilla outfit,” said Darden. “Marcus mentioned his kid’s guinea pigs and I said perfect. From there we just worked out the logistics of how to get the critters to do what we needed.”
Dunn’s kids were very specific in that the pigs had to be treated very well and could not actually eat any Doritos. The crew came up with a Doritos prop bag that was completely cleaned of any Doritos residue and then used thin cardboard to give the bag “volume.” Inside the bag there was plenty of Timothy Hay.
As for the orange around Chip’s mouth, who was the eventual star of the commercial, computer animation was used to give the illusion of a guinea pig enjoying all the goodness humans normally enjoy with a tasty Doritos snack.
The commercial can be viewed at either the Doritos website or on YouTube. The YouTube version allows users to view on most mobile devices. Unfortunately the Doritos website is in Flash, which is not compatible with iphones or other mobile devices.
The first stage of the contest will be decided on January 4th, 2012 as judges will select the top five entries. From there, the public will vote on which commercial will be aired during the Super Bowl.
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My ex’s sister used to feed her guinea pigs human food like sliced cheese because she saw commercials such as this. I think it’s a shame people use guinea pigs in advertising not knowing that other people will mimic what they see or even go out and buy a pig from a pet store rather than rescue. Most guinea pig publicity is bad publicity.
While I agree that there are many bad guinea pig parents out there I believe they need to take full responsibility of their actions. There are so few guinea pigs in the media, I find it refreshing to see them and I hope it gets people talking. While I applaud those who are role models of guinea pig care in many situations, I don’t condemn those who don’t use every opportunity to make a guinea pig documentary.
Come now. Just try to feed a Dorito to a guinea pig and see what happens. The piggie will look at you like you are crazed enough to have tried to feed it a Dorito. They eat mostly what they were designed to eat. I’m quite surprised that a piggie ate cheese, but, stranger things have happened.
I think most people have enough sense to know that just because you see something done on TV, does not mean you should do it in real life…whether for your pets or for you. There is no way for example, that anyone would confuse a real life guinea pig with the G-Force Pigs any more than the average person should attempt to build a rocket suit because the guy in Iron Man does ! If you are going to own a pet, child, husband, or attempt to live on your own…find out what is best to feed yourself and your furry, feathered and human family. And I for one would love to see more guineas on the telly!
And I just wanted to say that 1) the piggys were nowhere near a real Doritos chip and 2) as shown in the commercial entry, nobody gave the Doritos to the piggys – they were being naughty and helped themselves
RE: the common sense aspect – my kids are 11 and 14 and they absolutely knew that giving a chip to a guinea pig was not appropriate and called me out for the accuracy of the commercial. “Guinea Pigs would never eat a Doritos.” I hope this bodes well for the rest of the population.