Possibly THE Worst Commercial Broadcast At 3AM In New York "1-800-Victim2"
This squirrel is the worst Geico tryhard ever.
1-800-Victim-2 is a law firm based in New York. This commercial aired on local New York television stations, namely WPIX-TV (The CW affiliate in NYC) sometime in 2009-2010, during late night hours.
Synopsis[]
A businessman is seen on the phone standing on the side of the road, when a cartoon grey squirrel walks up to him. He tells the man in an accent "You know you can never be too careful, accidents happen all the time". The scene cuts to a traffic light which turns red, and the man and the squirrel cross the street. When they walk, he says to the man "You know I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance?", when suddenly, the man turns around, and next thing you know a car is heading their way. The squirrel covers his eyes and screams, and then says "Oh dear, not again!", and then the car hits him, making him flip to the road. He gets up, totally unhurt by the accident, and answers with "I'm not gonna be a victim twice, I'm calling 1-800-Victim-2!"
The scene cuts to a cartoon treehouse attached to a real tree with another cartoon female squirrel standing out waving to a live action man. He is next seen "giving" the injured squirrel something white (presumably a shirt, since he does wear a white shirt in the next scene), and then in the next shot, he is shaking hands with another businessman.
The final scene has him say this to the audience: "Don't be a victim twice, call 1-800-Victim-2, hablamos español (we speak Spanish)."
Why It's Cursed[]
The commercial has low budget written all over it. The animation for the squirrel is noticeably awful, especially on the scene before the car hits him. You can even see that his body is constantly changing shape per scene.
On a second note, if you listen closely during previously said scene, you can hear the sound effect of the car looping rapidly, mainly in the left audio channel, which goes to show that they couldn't find a better sound effect to fit into the length of the scene. The "1-800-Victim-2" singers during the last 10 seconds also noticeably loop continuously. What should also be noted is that a lot of mic booms are heard during spoken dialogue, most likely because they didn't have any money to buy a better microphone as well.
Trivia[]
- Most of the background footage isn't from exactly New York City, where the firm is based, but rather from Westchester County.
- The squirrel might be shaking hands with Robert J. Greenstein, an attorney for the company.
- The "1-800-Victim-2" singers you hear in the background was taken from their other commercials, which feature a full rap jingle still used today. One commercial features the same squirrel dancing, with the same bad animation, and another features two men actually seen performing the rap.