davidn

Thanks to the eleventh wonder of the world, Youtube (placed after the Internet, Barack Obama and Crunchy Nut corn flakes), I've just rediscovered something that I hadn't seen in years. It's a set of adverts that Nationwide, the largest British building society, thought up in the early 90s. And they're so strange that I had been beginning to think that they only existed as a figment of my imagination - they're characterized by everything moving in a demented stop-motion fashion, rather like Jacob's Ladder with added cheerful music in the background. Apparently they're based on Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, but not realizing that at the time, I thought they just looked like the dreams you would have after swallowing an entire bag of sugar before bed. They come in three varieties:

Home is the one that I remembered, with the walking postbox, garden gnome and rearranging letters on the garden gates.

Saver isn't much better, featuring among other things a set of walking bagpipes. The best bit, though, is the office chair that slides all the way in from the foreground.

Business is probably the best experience as a whole, starting off with a normal enough scene but gradually getting more and more demented, finishing with waltzing tables, siren-screaming violins, and naturally, a bathtub on wheels.

I can't really make any more commentary than that - they have to be seen to be believed, and then you'll probably never forget them.