Leave it to Atari to come up with an ad campaign that is even worse than "Do the Math." This thumb-centric Jaguar advert is wrong on too many levels to count. Perhaps the only good thing about this commercial is that it could have been worse, the headline could have read: "Thumbelievable!" Sometimes a little restraint goes a long way ... especially when your advertisement is so ugly that it hurts to look directly at it.

I'm sorry, but the person that decided that it would be a good idea to make a commercial out of a severed thumb needs to be fired. And not just fired, he should be blacklisted from all future employment. No fast food, no sales positions and thankfully no jobs as a sitcom writer at Fox. In this commercial we see that severed thumb welcomed in a parade, interviewed about his records (which include NBA Jam T.E., Super Burnout and Val D'Isere Skiing and Snowboarding), and explain why the Jaguar is the system to get. But there's nothing in this advertisement about it shriveling up and turning blue, it seems like that would just be inevitable.

But forget the thumb for a moment, the real problem with this advertisement is that very little of it is about promoting the games and system. There's one small picture of the Jaguar at the bottom of the commercial, and the four covers and four pictures of the games make up around 30% of the total page. The rest is there to look at a severed thumb and have somebody write some fake news. It's all very confusing, but then, almost everything Atari did back then was very confusing.

FROM: Skating With Bad Advertising