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Anyone see the BestBuy Vulcan mind meld TV ad?

O

oldSystem

Cadet
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I just saw it on Headline News channel I think. Customer is shopping for laptops, employee says "well first i'd like to get to know you." hand lunges to his head, does the classic claw connection against face. Customer freezes, employee in deep concentration, mumbling things. Finishes meld, makes perfect laptop selection. Customer replies "oh, you're good!" or something really lame along those lines.

No Star Trek references were made in word, but it was clearly a Vulcan mind meld. For what reason? I have no idea. At first I was hopping it would have something to do with ST:XI, but no such luck.

It wasn't funny. It might have been a little funny if they actually got a Vulcan to do it, and he was really dramatic about it. But this commercial was just stupid.

Anyone else see it?
 
I kinda saw it- I was cooking dinner and knew that a Best Buy employee touched a customer's head to read their mind. I didn't even see that she was doing a mind meld! :lol:
 
I thought it was funny. So what it didn't mention ST; not everything has to be an advertisement for everything else.
 
I've heard the commercial several times, but I've never actually watched it before. I'll have to be sure I do next time it's on the air here.
 
I just saw it, kinda stupid. I don't know who it's supposed to appeal to. Non Trek fans either won't get it, or think it's dumb, and the real fans should walk away feeling the same way. The thing ends with the sales woman telling the guy he's going to have four kids. I wasn't aware that mind melds involved the ability to predict the future. I would think that if you were going to attempt to parody something, you would maybe know something about the subject matter. Maybe for the next commercial they can have the sales person perform a force choke gesture as the customer begins to levitate. :brickwall:
 
EnsignRicky said:
I just saw it, kinda stupid. I don't know who it's supposed to appeal to. Non Trek fans either won't get it, or think it's dumb, and the real fans should walk away feeling the same way. The thing ends with the sales woman telling the guy he's going to have four kids. I wasn't aware that mind melds involved the ability to predict the future. I would think that if you were going to attempt to parody something, you would maybe know something about the subject matter. Maybe for the next commercial they can have the sales person perform a force choke gesture as the customer begins to levitate. :brickwall:
Click to expand...

I had the same problem with the ad. Mind melds don't predict the future.

That gives me an idea for a thread I'm going to start.
 
EnsignRicky said:
I just saw it, kinda stupid. I don't know who it's supposed to appeal to. Non Trek fans either won't get it, or think it's dumb, and the real fans should walk away feeling the same way.
Click to expand...
Er, you know, mind-melds have kind of gotten a bit of press over the years. They're not hard to recognize.

Your claim to what ``real fans should'' do in response to the commercial is mistaken.
 
Nebusj said:
EnsignRicky said:
I just saw it, kinda stupid. I don't know who it's supposed to appeal to. Non Trek fans either won't get it, or think it's dumb, and the real fans should walk away feeling the same way.
Click to expand...
Er, you know, mind-melds have kind of gotten a bit of press over the years. They're not hard to recognize.

Your claim to what ``real fans should'' do in response to the commercial is mistaken.
Click to expand...

It was exhausting, but I just finished asking every single person on the face of the planet; And your right, with the exception of a little old lady in Bangladesh, they all knew exactly what a mind meld is. With the extra time left over, I also discovered that Vulcans are indeed clairvoyant. I should have remembered the episode where Spock won the Federation lottery. If none of this makes any sense to you, good. Now were even. :thumbsup:
 
EnsignRicky said:
It was exhausting, but I just finished asking every single person on the face of the planet; And your right, with the exception of a little old lady in Bangladesh, they all knew exactly what a mind meld is.
Click to expand...
All right. If you insist on having it qualitatively proven to you that the Vulcan mind meld is not an obscure, barely-known, dimly recognized phenomenon that only those highly steeped in Trek mythology will ever recognize and that Best Buy is foolish for making a commercial which depends for its humor value on the audience recognizing a mind meld:

A Google search of ``mind meld'' turns up about 150,000 links. This seems surprisingly small to me, but this is about as good a methodology as I can offer for outside validation. (Specifically, ``mind meld'' turns up 143,000; ``mindmeld'' 36,000; some of those are surely redundant, so I'm rounding off for simplicitly.)

In contrast, the most delightful character from The Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion, turns up in 303,000 links. Therefore, we may conclude that the mind meld is approximately half as familiar to the world as the Cowardly Lion is.

In short, the mind meld is obscure only by the same standards that the Cowardly Lion is obscure. (And by the way, a Google search for the words Dorothy and Toto on the same page comes up with a mere 110,000 hits.)

With the extra time left over, I also discovered that Vulcans are indeed clairvoyant. I should have remembered the episode where Spock won the Federation lottery. If none of this makes any sense to you, good. Now were even. :thumbsup:
Click to expand...
So, you're actively upset, are you, that a Best Buy commercial in which a sales clerk performs a mind meld in order to guide a customer to a wiser choice in personal computers does not appear to square with the canon of Vulcan presentations displayed in the past?
 
Nebusj said:
EnsignRicky said:
It was exhausting, but I just finished asking every single person on the face of the planet; And your right, with the exception of a little old lady in Bangladesh, they all knew exactly what a mind meld is.
Click to expand...
All right. If you insist on having it qualitatively proven to you that the Vulcan mind meld is not an obscure, barely-known, dimly recognized phenomenon that only those highly steeped in Trek mythology will ever recognize and that Best Buy is foolish for making a commercial which depends for its humor value on the audience recognizing a mind meld:

A Google search of ``mind meld'' turns up about 150,000 links. This seems surprisingly small to me, but this is about as good a methodology as I can offer for outside validation. (Specifically, ``mind meld'' turns up 143,000; ``mindmeld'' 36,000; some of those are surely redundant, so I'm rounding off for simplicitly.)

In contrast, the most delightful character from The Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion, turns up in 303,000 links. Therefore, we may conclude that the mind meld is approximately half as familiar to the world as the Cowardly Lion is.

In short, the mind meld is obscure only by the same standards that the Cowardly Lion is obscure. (And by the way, a Google search for the words Dorothy and Toto on the same page comes up with a mere 110,000 hits.)

With the extra time left over, I also discovered that Vulcans are indeed clairvoyant. I should have remembered the episode where Spock won the Federation lottery. If none of this makes any sense to you, good. Now were even. :thumbsup:
Click to expand...
So, you're actively upset, are you, that a Best Buy commercial in which a sales clerk performs a mind meld in order to guide a customer to a wiser choice in personal computers does not appear to square with the canon of Vulcan presentations displayed in the past?
Click to expand...

I actually have a great ability to identify jokes; I found your need to attack my opinion quite funny. I can see that you put a lot of, umm.....words into your arguemant, but I simply can't waste any more of my time debating with someone who comprehends everything they read in a manner that allows them the illusion of being smarter than everyone else. your just going to have to be content with playing with yourself.
 
I thought it was a cute commercial and it made me laugh. No real need to over-analyze it beyond that.
 
I thought it was cute. Not really a mind meld as much as a psychic reading of some sort.

Still, it grabs my attention every time.
 
I saw in on first run quite a while back. It seemed a bit strange. A commercial that only a Star Trek fan would understand.
 
I don't know, I think they make it pretty clear she's reading his mind. So I think most people would get that much, they just wouldn't get the fact that it was a Mind Meld.
 
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