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09/12/2005: Forever Linked With Furby!

It’s been a pretty special day for me. I’ve slowly gotten into the producing side at Nick, meaning, on occasion, I get to produce the spots I write. It’d take me eight paragraphs to explain what that means, but essentially, you stay with a project from start to finish and direct every creative aspect of it. About a month ago I won a pitch for a Furby-related “giveaway spot” (this is why I went to Toronto a few weeks back), and today, the bitch hit the air. I love it. It’s so me. Love it so much that I’m going to put up with a 20MB download to let y’all see it, because I doubt very much that I can persuade the site’s audience to watch Nickelodeon all week until my spot happens to come on. It wasn’t too terribly long ago that I spent my days hunting down Furbies at toy stores during their initial hot run to make a fast buck on eBay. Now I’ve done a commercial for ‘em. My dreams are twisted, granted, but it’s nice to see some of them come true.

The Halloween Countdown rolls on with September 13th’s tribute to McDonald’s Halloween Gift Certificates, a free ticket to cheeseburgers for any trick-or-treater who was lucky enough to find the holy house that gave them away. Last call for the Halloween Art Contest, as I’ve already gotten plenty of entries, including a few that are quite clearly awesome in every way possible.


Posted by Matt. E-mail me!

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Discussion Thread: 83 comments

McDonald’s coupons and I never had good luck. I always got excited when I got them (due to the possiblity of free fast food), but they hardly ever got used. Most common in my house were the free cheeseburgers for honor roll. I don’t think they did that everywhere, because I never got them again once I moved to a different city. Anyway, the problem was convincing my mom it was worth it to get in the car and drive all the way to the McDonald’s to get a free cheeseburger that was only worth about 79 cents. The only way to justify the trip was for us all to get dinner, and then we were spending money we wouldn’t be otherwise, so it was no longer a deal. Plus, as a kid I was always jealous because they gave out Big Mac coupons to the kids with the most improved grades. I made honor roll every grading period and all I got was a cheeseburger that wasn’t worth making the trip. That was kind of typical for that school though. They never rewarded consistency. (Really, my childhood wasn’t the bummer I’ve made it out to be the past couple of days.)

Ghosted by Lori @ 09/13/2005 11:20 AM EDT

Congrats on the commercial Matt!

Loved the new Ghost w/The Most. It really is a sticky question of whether or not we should punish a formerly great artist for their latter day sins, but just out of sheer love of the theoretician, I will say that anything of value is simply a blip on an otherwise uninterupted downward trajectory :D

Ghosted by Knegative @ 09/13/2005 11:30 AM EDT

And anyone who can make sense of my last comment has my undying love and affection. This is your future kids! Mixing references together to come up with unintelligable gibberish, interpretable only by the handful of people as twisted as you :P

Ghosted by Knegative @ 09/13/2005 11:34 AM EDT

Matt meant those happy clouds that Lakitu rides around on in the Super Mario games. I haven’t seen the ad yet, but like Sandy Duncan, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Falk, I’ll keep an eye out for it. I never got a McD’s funny money certificate, but I did get a toothbrush once. There were several broken brushes on the porch and in the yard, but I thought, "meh. It’s a free something, anyhoo." Still the best treat I ever got was at this one house, this lovely young lady answered the door dressed in a Genie/Harem costume. Hubba-hubba! And thus jump-started me into pooberty! I miss Trick-Or-Treating in the Bay Area. No kids having to wear coats over the costumes.

Ghosted by kingklash @ 09/13/2005 11:41 AM EDT

Commercial looks awesome Matt! I was hoping you would put it up when it came out as I don’t get Nickelodeon, congratulations!:)

Ghosted by MissKitty @ 09/13/2005 12:22 PM EDT

Matt – Congrats on the Nick piece! It’s pretty awesome. Now, if we could just get a Frankenberry appearance on the Halloween Countdown..

Ghosted by Review the World @ 09/13/2005 12:49 PM EDT

GAH! That little girl with the spastically-moving head and forehead-mounted pig-snout will undoubtedly be the scariest thing I see all Halloween season.

Ghosted by The Yeti @ 09/13/2005 1:16 PM EDT

Kneg-
hi fidelity, when the guy is buying stevie wonder for his daughter, (you are so random)

Ghosted by kb @ 09/13/2005 1:26 PM EDT

The new Furby is really great. The one at the store asked if I was happy to see him,and I said no,and he got all sad. AND I ACTUALLY FELT BAD. I apologised to Furby. These things are the real deal,it’s like the company felt bad about the first Furbys,and now they made one that lives up to it’s hype.

Ghosted by kid nicky @ 09/13/2005 2:12 PM EDT

Great job on the commercial Matt. And keep those fantastic Halloween articles coming :)

Ghosted by Chappy @ 09/13/2005 2:43 PM EDT

Kneg making Cusak references is no shocker…that’s like me mentioning MST3K, or maybe HBO shows. Speaking of, Rome just got renewed for a second season.

Ghosted by squee4242 @ 09/13/2005 2:45 PM EDT

Kneg making Cusak references is no shocker…that’s like me mentioning MST3K, or maybe HBO shows. Speaking of, Rome just got renewed for a second season.

Ghosted by squee4242 @ 09/13/2005 2:45 PM EDT

The Shrunken Head Apple article is screaming out for an update/link to the latest photo that was on the blog a few months ago.

Ghosted by Carri @ 09/13/2005 2:47 PM EDT

Matt we had something similar in my school from K-5 except all classes pretty much took half the school day to dress up and march around showing off their costumes while "The Monster Mash" blared over the P.A. system. After the parade everyone would return to their classes where the room mothers had decorated and had plenty of candy, pizza, pop (yes i say pop), and other fun activities. This occurred on most holidays at my school which included Christmas and Valentine’s Day. As for McD’s gift certs my bro accumulated a whole shitload for his academic prowess. He never used them so I had plenty of free cheeseburgers. They were the size of business cards and had a picture of a cheeseburger with the words "Be Our Guest" scrawled at the top. Lots of great memories.

Ghosted by phunqsauce @ 09/13/2005 4:14 PM EDT

Ah, those Micky D gift certificates. I remember getting them just about every year. (of course they were normally just for the ice cream) Weird thing is though, all those years I got them…I never got around to redeeming them…and the McDonalds was only bout 15-20 mins away from my house. Oh well, go figure eh?

While in this Halloween Spirit (again, sorry for the pun) If there are any people that have ever been to Castle Dracula In Niagara Falls…my older brother has an old sign from the place…it looks like it was from 70’s or 80’s….have a look. Also, very sorry that i don’t know how to shorten the URL. Other XE’ers have shown us…guess I should have paid better attention. *embarrassed blush*

click here

Ghosted by Jabo @ 09/13/2005 4:36 PM EDT

"And there, hanging off the insanely long URL, was a McDonald’s Gift Certificate!"
Dun-dun-duuunnnn!

Ghosted by kingklash, still leery of the Melting Grimace @ 09/13/2005 5:12 PM EDT

tinyurl.com
there is even an extension for it in firefox. makes your long one http://tinyurl.com/d4kr6

Ghosted by RAS @ 09/13/2005 5:17 PM EDT

I send my thanks out to whoever it was that shortened up that link!

Thank You…I promise not to do that again :D …or at least if i do, I’ll learn how to shorten it like that

Ghosted by Jabo @ 09/13/2005 5:36 PM EDT

Matt, the commercial is very cool! Think about hosting your other commercial and written work on the site, so potential future employers, along with X-Ers, can get the full Matt experience.

Ghosted by ME @ 09/13/2005 6:30 PM EDT

Im only kidding when I ask this, Tenacious Tate, but did this "holy day of obligation" have anything to do with giving the Catholic Church money? The priest at my church has to emphasize money and giving a portion of your salary (I think its around 10%) to the church. They’re now building a really nice church closer to my house. The same priest drives around in a Lexus. My boyfriend calls him "Father Lexus."

I’m looking forward to the art contest posting!!!!!!!! Not much longer now!

Ghosted by Allison @ 09/13/2005 6:51 PM EDT

Geez…I need to offer deep apologies to deep apologies to all X-E readers. I was in a really weird mood last night and posted stupid stuff all over this board. It was dumb and unnecessary, and I’m sorry. I believe I’ve done this a few times in the recent past, and if I have, I’m sorry for those as well.

Ghosted by Tougi @ 09/13/2005 6:53 PM EDT

Yeah, but you didn’t mention the other half of the reference.

Sick Boy Rules!

"beautifully f***ing illustrated"

Ghosted by Knegative @ 09/13/2005 7:03 PM EDT

A few comments:

1) Very cool commercial, Matt. Perfect for the microsecond attention span of my 18 third graders with ADHD.

2) The elementary schools around here do not have dress up or ANY kind of party for Halloween anymore. It’s due to a combination of political correctness out of control and living on the big ‘ol shiny buckle of the Bible Belt.

3) I was always disappointed when I got a McD’s certificate in my Boo bucket. I ended up using them, but I wanted CANDY NOW! I had (and still have) no sense for delayed gratification.

4) That bunny?pig? girl will haunt my dreams tonight.

That is all…

Ghosted by Jillybeann @ 09/13/2005 7:19 PM EDT

Our elementary school had an after-hours costume thing too. All grades K-6 went together and there was punch and cookies and a costume contest. We also had mini-parties during the school day in our own classrooms (my mom always made chocolate cookies decorated with candy korn for these parties). In High School we had Halloween dances where everyone came dressed up.

But the best was the Town Halloween parade. Right before the trick or treating hours started all the costumed kids would start at one end of town and march down Main Street. It rocked – the street was closed to traffic for the parade so we got to walk down the middle of the street… something you never ever get to do as a kid. The parade ended at the Fire Hall where donuts and cider was handed out and then we’d all disperse into town for trick or treating.

Ghosted by Carri @ 09/13/2005 7:39 PM EDT

Congrats on the commercial Matt! I gotta wait until my DSL get’s turned on tomorrow to check it out though….damn dial up.

Ghosted by D-Roc @ 09/13/2005 7:54 PM EDT

Lucky. I have never been to a Halloween party in my life. When I was a kid we came in with our costumes on 1 day and they paraded us around the streets for the villagers to see. Now they don’t even have THAT anymore. They have the PC "Fall Celebration." What a crock. I don’t even get trick-or-treaters. Last year I got a total of 0. I’m not even kidding. 0. And my town has trick-or-treat for TWO nights. My only salvation last year was that a local theater was having free showings of Teen Wolf. I hope they do that again this year, as last year I was not aware of the allegid "penis" in the end scene.

Ghosted by Mystie @ 09/13/2005 8:44 PM EDT

I do remember the McDonald’s Halloween gift certificates. I think we had a few around for years we never used.

As for Halloween parties, no, we never went to one, either. We always did our school Halloween festivies during school hours, and as far as I know, they still do the parades around the schools in most towns.

Carri, we had a town Halloween Parade, too, only ours was usually about a week or two before the big day. Same deal, only our parade ended at a local museum/park and was always held during the day. I hope they still have that parade. It was always a blast, and I looked forward to it more than trick-or-treating in some ways.

Ghosted by starwenn @ 09/13/2005 10:45 PM EDT

Given the fact that it’s practically Thursday already on the cool coast it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting in my contest entry in time. Good luck to everybody else!

Ghosted by squee4242 @ 09/13/2005 11:34 PM EDT

Congratulations on the cool commercial, Matt! It’s always neat to see people you enjoy do well )

Ghosted by meredith @ 09/14/2005 12:18 PM EDT

Matt, as a former production intern who directed two public affairs segments for CBS-3’s Sunday morning newscast, that was a great commercial!!!!! Congratulations!! I would like to get into production to do fun stuff like that. Great job!

Of course, I still miss how every contest would say "Brought to you by the first network for kids, Nickelodeon!" Or, what it "the only network for kids"????? You think about it, it was the only network for us at one time.

Ghosted by Allison @ 09/14/2005 1:21 AM EDT

I think the audience of this website is more apt to watch Nickelodeon then most other sites. I watch it all the time.

Great commercial Matt!

Ghosted by mutton72 @ 09/15/2005 11:39 AM EDT

aaaah … Halloween certificated from the early 90’s. i SO useta use my allowance to buy these at one MickeyDee’s (said my mom sent me to) & then take them to another one & use them on myself.

Yet, i retrained my weight & have not eaten every baby in site (baby back … ribs …)

(PS) Furby’s? geez, my wife has 4. ugly little critters … but they do liketa curse :)

Ghosted by Steven @ 03/01/2009 1:51 AM EST

URL has expired :( lol I wanted to see the commercial!

Ghosted by Jaclyn @ 11/13/2009 5:55 PM EST

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 12th, 2005 at 8:22 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.