Witz Pickz: Reynolds Parchment Paper

Parchment paper. I don't know what it is. I don't know how its magic works. What I know is that you can put it in an oven and it won't burn up and that my Great-Grandma was pretty into it--and for those two reasons I'm on board with it. Well, apparently, not enough people feel the same way, because Reynolds is attempting to bulk up their parchment paper sales via a terrible commercial. I looked for it online, but I guess it didn't go viral, so I'll just have to describe what happens:

A woman is baking gingerbread men. Apparently, she didn't put any oil or spray on the baking sheets because when she goes to spatula one off, the head sticks to the pan and breaks off from the body. The next thing we see is this woman's pre-teen daughter holding the body of the gingerbread man, which the woman still took the time to dress up with frosting. Her crappy daughter takes a look at the cookie and proceeds to feed it to the dog, who also looks uninterested. Time to teach your daughter about being happy with what they have, right? NOPE!

The next shot is of the woman scraping the entire two sheets of cookies directly into a trash bag. It's not entirely unlike those "Crying Indian" litter PSAs from the '70s.* Bare minimum fifty g-men are mauled and tossed away. Now, I'm only thirty and don't have any kids, so maybe I just haven't experienced the omni-present day-to-day shattering of one's mind and spirit which comes from being a long-time spouse and parent, but I would eat those cookies. Even if my disappointing child wouldn't touch them, I'd be like, "Alright, whatever, (fuck you), more for us."

Maybe, and I mean MAAAAYBE, she doesn't want to eat the cookies herself for some reason, but how about asking her husband (while we don't meet a husband, I'm assuming the people pushing parchment paper at Reynolds aren't also pushing any kind of progressive household) if he'll eat the cookies before throwing them all out? My only conclusion is that she has a terrible marriage and a terrible life and the only thing she has left is waiting for her husband to come home so she can show him the bag of discarded body parts and say, "This. This is my life. I'm leaving."

ME: And then she just throws out all of the gingerbread men!
EM-DASH: That's bullshit.
ME: I know--
EM-DASH: --Everyone knows you can just glue the heads back on with frosting.**

Now get ready, because this is where PARCHMENT PAPER comes in! The woman proceeds to bake an ENTIRE NEW BATCH of cookies, this time placing the parchment paper down on the baking sheets first. They come out GREAT! Their heads are INTACT! Her horrific shit-princess of a daughter delights in the eating of the gingerbread man. And here's where I would differ from this TV mom: after biting off the head of the g-man, the cookie looks identical to the broken one from earlier. One bite. In the commercial, the mom is psyched that her child is happy. In my world, I would take that opportunity to lay into my hellscape of a daughter, question her intelligence, break her down emotionally, and then tell her that no matter how good the cookies turn out, there's still no Santa Claus and her nose is always gonna be that big (my child will be genetically doomed nose-wise, that's just a fact). Then, her mom will start yelling at me, as well she should. So, yeah, I'm not ready for kids.

(You think telling a kid there's no Santa Claus is tough, try tellin' an adult there's no Jesus!)

And yet, possibly the saddest moment in the whole commercial comes at the very end when they show the product with the information, "Look for Reynolds Parchment Paper next to Reynolds Aluminum Foil Wrap in your local grocery store." Their product is so obscure at this point and is selling so badly that they have to explain where it might be in the store. Soup never had that problem. Campbell's is never like, "Look for it next to the broth at your local supermarket!" Everybody knows where the soup aisle is.

Your Move Wax Paper,
Witz

*About those. Yeah, the Native-American had a tear rolling from his eye, but am I the only one who thinks he had a lot of other things going on? Litter is bad, but in this PSA, the guy rows his canoe through industrial waste, parks it on the beach, walks up the hill to see an endless landscape of cars and white people who stole the land he loved and destroyed the heritage he embodied. So, while I'm sure the littering wasn't ideal, I'm guessing a single blanket is enough to trigger some tears for everything and everyone he has lost.

**And that, ladies and gents, is why we're getting married.