This couldn’t be more bizarre, or unexpectedly amusing, or kind of clever if you squint with your brain just so: Mercedes plus Nintendo plus Super Mario Bros. plus a sequence halfway in where that’s all reimagined as a live action thing, complete with realistic flagpole, castle, rocky wasteland and no-legged Goomba.
That Mario’s too tall though. Anyone can see that. And what’s with the lazy because-I’m-bad, Goomba toe-stubbing saunter from the car? What’s the message here, “Mercedes makes you steely-eyed, big-nosed and oblivious”?
From the school of “squirrel!” ad design, it’s hard to know what made Mercedes opt to do this now, with Nintendo’s game system (the Wii U) struggling, if not on the ropes. E3 2014 in a week-and-a-half? Maybe. They probably wanted to get people talking about it. And here we are talking about it.
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Write to Matt Peckham at matt.peckham@time.com