Here's the rule of advertising: if you're going to make fun of a successful product, you sure as hell better make sure your product is just as good (if not better) than what you are making fun of. Obviously that is not a lesson that Electronic Arts and their game James Pond II - Codename: Robocod were familiar with. Here EA makes fun of Sonic the Hedgehog by saying that "Speed Isn't Everything," but they forget the mention that good game play and solid level designs are also important. Unfortunately there was only one game in this advertisement that had those two things, and it wasn't James Pond!

Making fun of Sonic the Hedgehog doesn't make a lot of sense, especially when your game is already a parody of something else. This is James Pond, a fish version of the popular 007 character. So why not parody a Bond movie or one of the actors that played Bond (trust me, it's easy to make fun of Timothy Dalton)? Heck, they could have gone after Robocop, since they are also making fun of that series in the name. But they decide to attack Sonic. I guess Super Mario was too busy to show up for this crummy advertisement.

What's funny about this advert is that James Pond claims to be able to do a lot of things, but none of it looks very interesting. He talks about driving, flying and stretching, yet the demonstrations make it look as totally lame. Do we really want Sonic floating around in a bathtub? And who cares if Sonic can "stretch up high"? Actually, is that something that fish are even able to do? And since we're injecting logic into this commercial, how is it possible that James Pond is able to walk around in the real world without there being any water? What good is flying and driving if you shrivel up and die when you don't have any H2O? If I were Sonic I would run too, because nobody likes to stand by and watch a fish die from lack of water. It's just sad and grotesque, much like this horrible advertisement.

FROM: The Real Housewives of Bad Advertising