Nescafe' - Only half a cup, please.

I know people who regard themselves connoisseurs of coffee. They say things like "this is good coffee" and "this coffee tastes bad". Snobs. In my mouth (which is where almost all my tasting goes on with my nose coming in a close second), the pleasantness of a cup of coffee exists in direct proportion to how much non-coffee flavorants have been added to it. By the time coffee reaches the drink-it-without-making-a-face state, it could just as easily be acetone and I wouldn't know the difference because of all the Swiss Miss/sugar/Life Savers/Cap'n Crunch I've dissolved into it. "Hey Phil, this is great acetone! What's in it?" "The entire product line of the M&M Mars corporation."

So, when people turn up their nose at instant coffee, I feel like I'm doing them one better when I turn my nose up at all other coffee. It makes no difference to me whether the boiled roasted bean juice has been dehydrated before starting it's new life as a fluid in my belly.

That being said, Nescafe' knows how to sell coffee.

Click through the smaller version down below for  a high resolution version of this ad.

It's not the brown spot color, although, strategically, that was very clever. It's not the uniform esses of cartoon steam planted dead center in everyone's cup. It's not the Clark Gable and Audrey Meadows simulants they hired to pose for the reference photo.

It's not even the pre-fifties clip art people enjoying their bathtub batch of Nescafe' at the bottom of the ad, thought all these things are great.

THIS guy is frikkin' fantastic. he makes me want to go and buy Nescafe'. If he were holding a dead kitten instead of coffee, I'd still grab my coat to go find a dead kitten at my local retailer. "Which aisle are the dead kittens in?" I'd ask, and then practice my wonky eyebrows on the way to aisle four to pick out my kitten.

When you crop in on him like this, you miss out on his shoulders and elbow, which both describe his ramrod-straight dorky posture. Normal Rockwell paintings always have people sitting like this. Nobody in real life ever sits like this because it looks so stupid, and it's not comfortable. When I was a kid, I loved Rockwell paintings, but now the stilted posing of the people makes me want to punch the paintings. This is why it is hard for me to shop for priceless heirloom copies of The Saturday Evening Post. I'm liable to start punching them before I've even paid for them.

Anyway, this dork looks like he's never had coffee before.. maybe like he's never had anything before, and everything in his life makes him go "SAAAAAAYYYYY...!". If only we knew what he was saying. Doodley doodley doodley doodley....

-"Saaaaay! What'd you call this, again? 'Coff-fee'? Some new delight from the orient? Is it hard to find?"

-"Saaaaaay! The spaghetti was getting in the way all along! I should just drink bolognese sauce instead!"

-"Saaaaay! This cup is delicious! How do you get them so crunchy?"

-"Saaaaaay!  Everything tastes better when my hand is on the hostess' thigh!"

-"Saaaaaay! Nescafe is even better without water!"

-"Saaaaaay! What'd you call this? 'human blood', eh?"

Click for hugeness.