Remember how extreme everything had to be back in the 90s and early 2000s? Forget your stupid skinny jeans and your doofy smartphone; that was the decade of extreme sports, No Fear t-shirts, and in-your-face video game advertising. Even our burgers had to be EXTREEEEEEME!
In retrospect, I don't know what we were all excited about. Had we known about the shitty the economy or drone strikes or airport security that was yet to come, we probably would have calmed the fuck down a little bit. But it's immensely fun to look back on this more EXTREEEEEEME time.
Case in point: This amazing series of TV commercials I was alerted to today for the delicious Checkers fast food chain (also called Rally's in some places) back in 1999 that were developed by animator Peter Chung, who also created the iconic 90s MTV cartoon Aeon Flux.
And when I say amazing, I really do mean amazing. And EXTREEEEEEME. You should care about it because it involves muscle cars, ridiculous driving stunts, rock n' roll music, and having the kind of middle-finger-in-the-air attitude that characterized the 1990s so well.
The ads star a woman named Holly, who in one ad drives her badass old supercharged Mustang into a ditch, over some non-extreme assholes' station wagon, and into the Checkers drive-thru, where she gets some "High Performance Human Fuel" that magically gasses up her car.
This, it almost goes without saying, takes place with electric guitars blaring in the background. Because of course it does.
There's a second one that involves a chicken race between Holly and a thuggish-looking guy in another car. It ends with him chickening out, rolling his car, and her stepping on his injured hand so she can steal... his spicy chicken sandwich.
We did things differently back in the 90s, bro.
The third one features Holly going full Jeremy Clarkson so she can stretch her mouth wide enough to eat a double cheeseburger.
I don't know when we, as a people, stopped being so EXTREEEEEEME. But I know we're all worse off for it.
Hat tip to Dan!