Skittles & The Weird pt. 3

Don't forget part 1 and part 2 of this series.

• This commercial is a wonderful piece of visual storytelling and film making. The presentation of the key elements and subject matter are very clean.
• The commercial opens with an establishment shot of two young men making an informal trade in a back yard. From the start we can hear poor opera singing, but we don't know exactly where it's coming from until the next few shots. Singing. The bunny is singing. Both boys seem to be quite satisfied with the trade.
• Some time later, indicated by the change in weather and daylight conditions, the situation looks grim for the now bunny owner. Since the beginning of the commercial, the bunny hasn't stopping poorly singing. And now, it my be getting on our nerves, but the bunny's charm has definitely worn off on the new owner.
• Remember that terrible feeling you get for trying to force a "trade-backsies" on your friends back in the day? That terrible situation and feeling is reflected by the pouring rain that soaks the bunny owner as he scampers back looking to return things to the way they were. That's when he sees the Skittles boy through the window eating the Skittles. Dim lights. No TV on. Just eating Skittles as if they were the only source of enjoyment in the world (besides a singing bunny of course).
• As Mr. Skittles bites into the candies, in the next scene the bunny decides to bite into his new owner. If you thought the situation couldn't get any worse, now the boy is bit, the bunny is gone, and the story ends in the rain. "Treasure the Rainbow." The lesson of the story is we must must hold onto the things we value in life. The best part of it all is, the singing bunny could have been anything and the message would have still been pretty clear. That's one of my favorite kinds of weird; where despite an element being "extraordinary" the story and the way people relate to it is quite ordinary.

• A Skittles leak. It doesn't matter where the Skittles come from. And it doesn't matter that the ceiling is leaking Skittles. The point is, the apartment man doesn't want Skittles all over his floor.
• The repair man "fixes" the problem by fastening handle bars into the ceiling and hoisting up a tiny man who's job is to hang there and eat the Skittles as they fall. Now there are two weird/out of the ordinary elements in the commercial. The apartment man questions the repair man's methods. The repair man reaffirm his methods and laughs along with his tiny coworker. 
• The apartment man is not happy about the whole situation. With his arms crossed (closed off, defensive, and skeptical body language) we can infer that the apartment man is wary of being ripped off by repair men. After this repair man "fixes" the problem in a few seconds with a questionable method and then laughs about it, we're left feeling a little cheated. One might think "the apartment man could have just eaten/caught the Skittles himself." Perhaps he should have. Depending on how you look at it, the apartment man didn't have a problem in the first play.

• This is one of my favorite Skittles commercials. 
• Though the commercial doesn't have any visual metaphors or film storytelling techniques worth talking about, I wanted to point out that it does raise the question of "what is awesome." The girl brings her friend, Joel, to the back of the store to show him Tim's special ability. After witnessing the stapler turn into Skittles Joel says, "that's awesome."
• Tim questions how awesome his ability is: "Is it awesome." Tim continues by explaining how different his life is because of his ability. He can't hold his baby. He can't dress himself. And he's a danger to those around him; "He'll never see his family again." All the while, Joel and his friend eat the "stapler Skittles" only slowing down once they realized how some blessings can actually be curses.
• Empathizing and relating to other's plights can be tricky. To Joel and his friend, having more Skittles is a good thing. This is the attitude that most have initially to the chocolate touch as well.  But the tone becomes quite dark when the "crippled/handicap" Tim expresses his rage and destroys his work desk. Yet the whole thing is rainbow sugar coated at the same time. I don't know whether to feel for Tim, or to go out and buy more Skittles. And that's the weirdest part of it all.