Nightmare Fuel/Advertising

## Electronics

* When Theorysonic's Musicard format was introduced to the US, SanDisk decided to treat it with all the respect a new music format deserves. How did they get their point across? *By **literally steamrolling other popular music formats***. This infamous advert (aired in 2000) features vinyl records, cassettes, headphones, and CDs, lying in a dark, empty field while some eerie synth music plays. The narrator (Christopher Berger) laments in a deep, James Earl Jones-esc voice:
	+ Narrator: Imagine a world of perfect music. No imperfections. No scratches, no skips, no weardown. You'd think that world could never happen... *but SanDisk found a way.*
	+ And then, out of the blue, *a steamroller comes in and **crushes all the other formats***, leaving nothing but a single Musicard in it's tracks. It pans into the Musicard, then ends with the narrator saying the famous tagline:
		- Narrator: SanDisk Theory Musicard. *Accept no substitutes.*
		- The ad's sinister and eerie tone instantly generated headline news, and drew mass criticism from many ad critics. Combine that with the dark atmosphere and the borderline nightmarish synth tones playing in the background, make this possibly one of the creepiest ads of it's day.

## Video Games

* An ad for EKBA 2000 features a little girl playing in a backyard. Then, she sees her entire house is scribbled with Kaiji Zheng's name. Then, Kaiji himself comes out, and says "Hi!", and then **his face turns demonic** as he says "You haven't bought EKBA 2000, have you?" Then, still demonic, he describes the game's features, as the girl becomes more and more scared, then she runs into the house, and comes back with a copy of the game stapled to her chest. A narrator closes the ad off with:

Narrator: "EKBA 2000. It's like playing but not."

* The UK ad isn't much better. It shows a fake children's game (with an obvious BBFC U rating, even though EKBA 2000 also got a U) called "Happy Basketball" being ripped up by Kaiji Zheng. It's then placed on a fake grave for then-still alive Faizullah Lufaqi (Lufaqi would die IRL in 2020 due to COVID-19). It ends with the slogan:

Narrator: "EKBA 2000. When you're here, you're here."

* When the VanellopeDash was on it's way, Dragon's Breath decided to enlist the help of Gamm Bal, a director famous for being very freaking creepy, to make a series of creepy ads for the system, including
	+ A chubby boy being hung in an alleyway,
	+ Four people getting shot by a firing squad (probably a reference to the climax of the Bal-directed Romano Family Quartet 3),
	+ A nuclear bomb exploding in a nursery,
	+ The system being formed of dirt (possibly the only appearance of the system in these ads), and finally,
	+ A weird parody of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where instead of chocolate, it's a variety of illegal drugs (this one is a 60 minute infomercial).
		- These ads generated immediate headline news, and they were banned in the UK for being "in bad taste, offensive and too inappropriate for children".
## Television

* An ad of TV Rá Tim Bum Victoria announcing that Zoomoo Victoria would substitute them was banned because of its content: It has noises of kids playing merged with a semi-dramatic song with a black and white effect, the screen was showing the logo of TV Rá Tim Bum becoming the Zoomoo one
Narrator: "Queres saber o futuro? Zoomoo Victória, Aqui buscamos o público e sua glória"

* It was banned because the B&W effect, the background song (without counting the kids' noises) and the first line which, in English, would mean "Want to know the future?", the ad scared 7 out of 10 kids