I’m Too Excited to Sleep

by krista on April 29, 2006

Actually, I can always sleep, no problem. I've never understood those Ambien addicts. I just get in bed and close my eyes and I fall asleep. But my wholesome sleeping habits aren't issue here. Though I haven’t noticed it in a few weeks, I was most disturbed when maybe a month ago I discovered that Disney World had dug up that extremely old commercial where the little boy at the end says in a peculiarly endearing voice (I’m only ever swayed by the use of pipsqueaks in advertisements maybe 2% of the time) “I'm too excited to sleep.”

Seeing it made me feel like I was going insane because I know that thing must be at least a decade old. I swear, my sister and I used to laugh at that commercial and we haven't lived in the same city and watched American TV together since 1994. That kid probably has kids of his own by now. At the very least, he’d be in college.

It’s not a classic like that Mikey Life cereal deal, so I don’t think they’re trying to capitalize on nostalgia. And I can’t imagine that Disney World is so cheap that they’d be forced to re-use a twelve-year-old commercial. There’s nothing distinctly dated about it, the hairstyles are kind of neutral and the family is wearing pajamas rather than clothes so there’s little giveaway there either.

Slightly less baffling, but no less confusing is how I keep seeing Sonic ads when there aren’t any Sonics even remotely near NYC. And they're not planning on coming here any time soon, if I'm to believe their map. The nearest location is 123 miles away in Ephrata, PA. Isn’t that wrong somehow? Aren’t ads sold in targeted markets? When I first moved here I went nuts every time I saw an ad for Friendly’s because I’d never heard of such a place and it sounded so likeable. You know, friends and ice cream, it doesn’t get any better. But the only one in NYC, at least at the time, was at a Staten Island mall. I did end up going almost two years later (scroll to 6/13/00 if you’re that bored/curious–it was too much trouble to import ancient entries by date) and it was a bit of a freak show. I’m not sure if it’s worth a two-hour drive just for Tea & BLT.