VW / Volkswagen GTI Mk V - Unpimp / Wrecking Ball (2006) :30 (USA)

Ze German engineer and his leggy blond assistant are back unpimping ze cars.

Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky
Director: Jonas Åkerlund
Production Co: RSA LA

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Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
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AnonymousCoward's picture

What I really HATE is when brilliant, innovative, entertaining TV commercials hit the airwaves and, almost immediately, they're either dropped altogether or "adjusted" to accommodate certain viewer tastes.

The VW wrecking ball commercial is my case in point. Funny as hell and only mildly provocative in its original form, this spot has been recently hacked---and not for time constraints, but for content.

Check it out, THIS sequence has now been entirely removed the commercial:

Peter Stormare gestures to the hood scoop and asks, "Vat does DISS do?"
Close shot on the scoop, and the car owner answers from off camera: "It sucks in air."
Peter's lovely assistant chides: "It's definitely sukkin'..."

That brief exchange is now gone from the commercial spot---the whole "sukkin" gag surgically removed.

Was it offensive? Yes, if you're Ward and June Cleaver back in 1958. But NOT in the 21st Century, wherein such a comment is entirely harmless and funny as hell.

"Sukkin" certainly won't scare off the target customers, the 18 to 25-year-old American males who have no taste whatsoever, as demonstrated by their pimp-mobiles. So who is VW afraid of insulting? Fundamentalist Christian octogenarians, who aren't going to buy the GTI Mark V anyway?

Political correctness rears its stupid head once more, ineffectually trying to re-engineer society one word at a time. WTF

Dabitch's picture

I'm glad we don't have the edited version in the archive. So sad to remove the sukkin'.

tod.brody's picture

That would suk. ;-)