You’ve seen the new Mountain Dew ad campaign, yes? Dew-mocracy, three new flavors, one will stay forever.
I worry about the future when we get new flavors of soft drinks. As an avid Coca-cola drinker I wake up in cold sweats thinking about the introduction of new Coke in 85. The soft drink market is fickle. New Coke and Crystal Pepsi can do damage to the original brand. It got me thinking about the next generation products that are thrown at us that, not only fail, but drag down the original.
So, as a warning to Madison Avenue, I give you my top 5 next generations that ruined the original.
The Special Effects were great, they even made it look like Keanu could act.
The Matrix
Sequels are bad for the most part, I think we all agree. Rarely do you walk away from a movie that has a 2 on it and think you got your moneys worth, right? (Exceptions like the Godfather and Major League do happen, but….) But we love the idea of the trilogy, after all the second and third parts of a trilogy aren’t really sequels; they’re the “rest of the story”. So when the Wachowski brothers blew me away in 1999 with “The Matrix” and revealed that this was only the beginning of yet another trilogy, I gotta say, I was stoked. Just a few years later in a movie theatre in Plano, Texas I learned the true meaning of disappointment. The two follow up movies were so lacking that I’m not sure I’ve sat down and watched the original since 2003. Anytime I catch a few minutes of it on cable I just feel empty because there was such great potential that never was realized.
One good thing you can say for the new trilogy, it ended this guys career before it ever started.
Star Wars
How do you follow up the most successful franchise of films? Make more. But George Lucas didn’t just throw together the next chapter for Luke and Han. He developed a trilogy of films based on the back story he had “already created” to explain where everybody came from. Everyone but Han, anyway. Now we all have the whole story of how a slave on a remote planet can meet a teenage Queen, stalk her for years only to marry her and impregnate her with twins then lose a lightsaber battle with a Jedi master that leaves him more machine than man, and you know what. I find that I really don’t care. Furthermore, now I watch the original trilogy and Darth Vader no longer has the evil guy above all other evil guys because I know that he started out as a little blond pod-racer who turned around and killed everyone who got on his nerves but allowed Jar-jar to live.
He might be a genius, but I still wouldn’t want him to coach my team.
Patriots Superbowls
There was no better story in sports, in my lifetime than the upstart Pats walking into the Superdome to take on the offensive juggernaut of the Rams and beating them with a 48 yard field goal with no time left in regulation. Three Superbowls and a few cheating scandals later, I’m tired of hearing how great the Patriots are. They have put together a good team and there fans should be proud of the accomplishments, but it’s all kinda hollow. The fact that Billichek has consistently bent rules regarding taping the defensive coaches and players on IR and possibly even wiring his defensive players to pick up the offensive signals of other teams has cheapened the whole thing. The really sad thing about it, they probably didn’t even need to, in order to win. But knowing what I know now, I can’t look past it and see the same story I used to.
Are you kidding? Is this the image the NFL really wants?
The Mannings
Archie Manning epitomized the lovable loser to me. Poor guy had no protection in New Orleans and still worked his butt off for 10 years with that franchise trying to make it work. 10 season and not a one of them produced a winning record, but he stuck it out. Now, his sons have taken over the NFL. Peyton and Eli have won back to back Super Bowl MVP awards and along the way made more commercials that Wilford Brimley and that look-alike that made the Hardees commercials combined. And one more thing, members of the media…stop asking Archie which son is his favorite. He thinks answering Cooper because he gave him grandchildren first is a great line and it always makes me want to jerk the steering wheel into oncoming traffic.
And you thought Garth was unattractive as a country singer.
Chris Gaines
Sue me, as a preteen in Texas I had every single Garth Brook album. Yep, all of them; including a compilation CD that McDonald’s sold with no new music, just 10 songs I already had on other CD’s. This guy was/is a master at marketing himself. Think about it, he has to be. We’re talking about an overweight, country music singer who doesn’t have the greatest voice being the highest selling solo artist of all time. But in 1999 Garth got together with Paramount Pictures and concocted an idea to reinvent himself as an aging alternative rockstar named Chris Gaines. Garth released an album titled “The Life of Chris Gaines” meant to be a pre-soundtrack for a movie based on the fictional rocker. The reception was so bad that Paramount pulled out of the project and no one else was willing to sign on and it began the decline of Garth’s career. He has only released one new album since (Which I own). To this day I don’t think of my Garth Brooks days without thinking about listening to the Chris Gaines album when it came in at the radio station I worked at in college and being repulsed by what I heard.
By the Way…if you would swing over to Dewmocracy.com and vote for Supernova…It’s the bomb…
Thanks.
If people care enough to vote for a flavor of Mountain Dew, they are going to be PISSED OFF if their favorite doesn’t make it.
Not sure if the MD people thought that one through.
Worked for M&M’s when they decided to replace the tan with blue, pink or purple. That made since though, who needs 2 different shades of brown?
I do!!!!