Video: Bizarre light bulb commercial from Thailand has just enough monsters

This commercial from Thailand, featuring a variety of what I presume are traditional monsters in Thai culture, is really fantastic. I can never get enough television featuring motile, glowing internal organs floating free of body but still attached to a malevolent head. Or transvestites, which are also features. And it actually makes me want to buy Sylvania lightbulbs, not because the commercial has a bit to do with the product, but just because I’d like to support a company that sanctions something this wacky.

[via Animal New York]

1. [gpmorrow]

   The floating head with entrails monster looks like a pennangalan, a Malaysian critter familiar to generations of western nerds like myself via its appearance in Dungeons & Dragons. Interesting to know that it’s Thai, too, and the varying name recalls the many different local varieties of vampire-like monster in Europe.

2. [wisekwai]

   Great find. Thailand has a lot of funny commercials. They are more entertaining than the TV shows.

   The floating head is the krasue, a very famous ghost in Thai folklore.

   I wish I knew more about some of the other ghosts, particular the one flapping a set a wicker wings.

3. [Anonymous]

   O_o … hey! the monster are terrifying…

   Why use monster for advertising?

   (Sorry for bad english!)

4. [teapot7]

   Hey! No fair giving away what it’s an ad for!

   When I first saw the ad I was guessing right up until the end what they were advertising.

5. [eustace]

   That was hilarious – with TWO visual punchlines.

6. [technogeek]

   Great commercial from the memorability and cultural-awareness points of view (with just enough parody). Highly memorable, worth sharing, and makes the point about the product…

   … unfortunately it does not make the point about the _brand_. Like many other wonderfully entertaining ads, I can’t remember whose it is without cheating and looking at it again. If they’ve got a near-monopoly in that market, that may be good enough; or they may be going for viral marketing where knowing whose ad it is becomes a game. But if this was competing in our yearly Rate The Super Bowl Ads contest, I’d have to score it as “high creativity, good short film, fails as an ad.”

7. [teamshadowboat]

   My friend Ponkamon (Panda) says:

   Yes….actually they are all urban legends. There are tons of tales about these ghosts.

   The first one is a female-only ghost (one with head, heart, and stomach floating around) you will become that kind of ghost only through saliva….pretty much if you made out with one, you become one…hehe

   The second one is a male-only ghost (the one with 2 bamboo trays strapped on his arms).

   The third one is also a female ghost. The spirits only live in a banana tree. At night they come out and seduce human men to become their husbands….if the guys fell into their traps, the guys can’t come back to earth and have to stay in spirit world forever.

   The forth one is a human whore. we call them jackfruit ghost…just because most hookers in bkk are always waiting for clients under jackfruit trees….isn’t it funny??

   The last one is the tall ghost. They are super tall. But they did bad deeds when they were human. So they’re born again as tall ghosts. They have mouth as big as a needle. But they are always hungry and have to come out at night to eat trash.

   How do you eat trash with a mouth the size of a needle? Sucks to be a ghost.

8. [License Farm]

   I love that the transvestite is spoken of in more hushed tones than are the monsters, probably because that’s the only one to exist to the extent that it could lash back.

9. [Anonymous]

   lol this is really good.
   kinda cool to get insight in the culture too.