As I watched my parent’s teams** win their wild card games this past weekend, I couldn’t help but notice the huge amount of commercials featuring Wilma & Donovan McNabb pushing the rest of the Eagles (and the rest of America, presumably) to eat Campbell’s Chunky Soup.

I guess the original intention was that our team would still be in the mix when all the ads aired. Oops.

Regardless, I couldn’t help but be reminded of this piece of sarcasm from December 2004:

Donovan McNabb finally got his wish today when football fans across America agreed to purchase Campbell’s Chunky Soup in order to shut him up. McNabb and his mom, Wilma, have been promoting the soup relentlessly in a series of television commercials and viewers are finally crying “no mas.”

“Ok. Ok, I’ll buy the frigging soup, all right? Jesus, just shut the fuck up about it,” said Philadelphia resident Ted Thorlakson, 32. “Every time I watch football I have to endure about two dozen Chunky Soup commercials. It doesn’t even look that great, but if it’ll shut these people up I’ll buy it. Mmmm…yum yum. I love Chunky Soup. There, now can I be left alone?” [...]

“We are experiencing a very high sales volume right now,” said Shannon Irby, director of marketing for Campbell’s. “It looks like our strategy to totally saturate the airwaves with our fun and informative commercials is paying off. By popular demand we have agreed to slow down the ads if our sales goals are met. We’re prepared to do that. But if the demands are not met, it’s on to Phase 2, which involves sending Donovan and his mom directly to consumers’ homes with a truckload of soup and a shotgun.”

May the gods forgive, it makes me laugh every time I read it. (I know. I’ve an odd sense of humour.)

* Alternate post title: Hawking Chunks. Aren’t we all glad I used some self-control to resist the tasteless pun?

** Mom’s from Boston, Dad’s from Pittsburgh. We’re a happy family today.