Choco-Chicken
If memory serves me right, during the summer of 2003 I was back at home in St. Louis doing pretty much nothing but sleeping and working at Caleco’s. This was even before I had this website and blog to waste time with. In a scheme that worked out even better than planned, I decided to take a class at Meramac Community College to pick up some IU-transferable credits. This also served as a great way for me to gain and subsequently launder AP credits, but that’s a completely different story.
The class I took was an advertising class, something that I figured would be fun and easy. It is during that class that I worked with Heisserer to create projects like “The Relationship Lady” infomercial, and I also designed some cereal called Infidel Crispies, with the mascot being then-Iraqi Information Minister Al-Salaf. The crowning jewel of this class, however, was the legendary Choco-Chicken commercial. Very few of you know of this video, mainly because it sat on a Hi-8 tape after being made, only to emerge briefly during my senior year at IU where I converted the video to Quicktime. The disc containing said Quicktime file was then lost forever, only to be discovered again on my recent trip to America. Forever can be short sometimes.
The video features that “Bird is the Word” song, bad acting, terrible audio, and horrible voice-over work. But most importantly, it also features a dancing mascot wearing a frightening chicken mask and an apron. Note that we filmed this video some morning in the frozen foods section of Wal-Mart, where of course we got kicked out for filming without permission. I’m sure the chicken costume had something to do with it as well. The end of the commercial also has Choco-Chicken Man posing with a little girl on crutches and an old man who smelled of whiskey at 11AM. I couldn’t make up stuff better than this. We also got kicked out by Wal-Mart a second time, for filming in the parking lot.
The video of course is not going to win any awards, but I’d say it’s amusing in the same way you occasionally listen to loud, belligerent hobos, just to hear what garbage they have to say*. We made it in only a day or two, and it was, in part, just an excuse for me to try and learn Adobe Premiere. It’s a little embarrassing, but I suppose some of you want to see it, right? Here’s the deal. If I get 5 people to comment on this post saying they want to see it, I will post the video. Yeah that’s a cheap move, but it’s not everyday you get to see a guy in a chicken mask dancing outside of Wal-Mart. Unless you live in the south maybe.
No one can resist the delicious taste of chocolate-covered chicken feet!
*One time when I was in New York with my dad, we heard a guy yelling that you can’t trust women because “they will STEAL YOUR DNA!” True story.
