Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy

To finish off our trio of strange pairings for the day, I present to you Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy:

Released by and paid for by Burger King, these one to two-minute shorts are all the rage on YouTube today. These short animated bits are (obviously) created and written by Family Guy and American Dad creator Seth MacFarlane. Apparently they'll be releasing one a week, and the following two have been done so far:

A Dog on the $25,000 Pyramid

This one is a bit dumb, because the only funny part is at the end. It seems like an outtake from one of the non sequitur jokes on Family Guy.

Super Mario Rescues the Princess

This one is a lot better than the first one, but it still feels like it would be right at home on Family Guy. I seriously wonder if MacFarlane is using all of the jokes that they didn't use already on these shorts. Probably.

The YouTube page for this allows you to enter a contest where the prize is an opportunity to buy Seth dinner at BK. Yep, that's right. You buy him dinner. Interesting concept. It goes on to say:
The winner of this sweepstakes will have the opportunity to buy Seth MacFarlane a meal at Burger King. That's right, the winner will buy the meal. But, you know, in the end you're still coming out on top. How many hours has Seth given to you? How many laughs have you recieved? How many times have you ripped off one of his jokes to impress one of your friends? Sit down, shake his hand, and buy Seth flame broiled deliciousness, you're still coming out on top.

I really like this. I mean, some of the jokes in the shorts (so far) are kinda edgy, and this "Buy Seth Dinner" idea is fucking brilliant, especially the "stolen joke" line. It's good to see a company take an interesting route like this in their marketing.

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