Video Taped Commercial Breaks from the Year 2010 Revisited

You might have visited a similar blog entry already up. Well, this one’s an altered version of that, with newly digitized (stereo) videos, as well as updated and corrected information.

As you get older, time seems to be going faster. When you’re younger, the school week seemed to drag on before finally reaching the weekend, and Sunday would eventually come to an end for a new week to start and the whole process to start over. As you age and reach high school, the end of the decade, which you thought would take forever to arrive, was suddenly getting closer and closer. Ultimately, as you become an adult, it feels as if the whole decade seems to be zooming past you, ending almost immediately.

The last part is how I feel about the 2010s. It seems only yesterday that I graduated high school and was about to start my first term of college (all with online courses!), even though I was part of the class of 2010. Many changes have occurred since then, mainly the introduction of flat-screen widescreen TV sets that everybody has. I myself didn’t join the widescreen TV craze until Christmas of 2012, when I got one along with a Blu-Ray player. Until then, I still had a smaller, CRT television set that was hooked up to a DVD player and separate VCR unit, the latter of which I’ve had since around 2002.

I still recorded programs on VHS all through the 2000s to the start of the following decade. I recorded some Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network programming (mainly Invader Zim and Sheep in the Big City on their respective networks). I also recorded network TV airings of Harry Potter movies, whether on ABC or its sister network ABC Family, usually whenever behind-the-scenes footage of the upcoming film would appear during commercial breaks, or just because I felt like it.

One example of the latter was when I recorded an airing of Prisoner of Azkaban (the slightly extended version that reinserts a few deleted scenes; other such scenes either didn’t have completed effects or seemingly had trouble finding an appropriate place in the film proper) in December 2010, during the Harry Potter Weekend portion of ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas block.

As the VHS format was seemingly fading away at the time, I figured that specifically VHS recordings from the dawn of the new decade would be incredibly rare, but later discovered that this wasn't the case.

Getting back to the subject of the movie, I got Azkaban when it originally came out on DVD on November 23, 2004, but sadly, only in a Pan-and-Scan fullscreen format, even though it was evidently shot in Super 35. I’m guessing that this is because the visual effects were rendered in the theatrical aspect ration of 2.35:1, but a behind-the-scenes feature on the DVD shows the digital version of Buckbeak the hippogriff apparently being created in 1.33:1.

As I didn’t have a widescreen TV yet when programs were starting to air in the 16x9 aspect ratio, I noticed that there would be black bars on the top and bottom of the screen, simulating the widescreen format, and when I discovered Azkaban would air in late 2010 in this format (and thus avoid the loathed pan-and-scan), I took my chance and recorded it on the same tape I have of part of an episode of Noggin’s The URL With Phred Show and some Sheep episodes, from 2002.

For years, I had forgotten about the Azkaban recording until late 2015/early 2016, shortly after I had received a tape-to-digital converter for Christmas. I converted the ad breaks into digital files and uploaded them to YouTube a few days later, not long after the death of Alan Rickman, the first of many 2016 deaths of beloved celebrities, and ABC Family changing its name to Freeform, losing the references to “family” because they were airing less and less family-oriented programming.

When uploading the ad breaks in early 2016, I didn’t remember the original date of the recording, only that it was in December 2010. It wasn’t until November 18, 2018, a whopping two years later, that I discovered the recording time, the airing from 2:30 PM to 5:30 PM on Sunday December 5, 2010. In November 2018, I searched online for the schedule for the 25 Days of Christmas block for 2010 and found some sites containing it. As you’ll see in the ads, there are many references to Order of the Phoenix airing “tonight at 9/8 Central.” Looking at the schedule, I’ve found that Phoenix only aired once, on Sunday December 5, 2010 at 9 PM Eastern time. It lined up with the frequent references to Phoenix airing “tonight at 9/8 Central.”

Later on, in 2024, I went out and bought an audio splitter for my VCR, when I discovered (during the collection of all my YTPs for the tenth anniversary for taking part in it) that my VHS transfers only have audio coming from the left channel. I inspected my VCR further and noticed, after all these decades, that it had only one audio-out port. I bought the splitter and started a re-transfer of all my tapes, this time in stereo.

It continued all the way into the following summer. To partially escape the blistering heat early in the season, I decided to start a digital re-conversion of the Christmastime 2010 ads from the Azkaban airing.

I distinctly remember recording it in the evening so I wouldn’t have to miss Big Brother, but I guess I was mistaken. A family member’s birthday was that day, so maybe I recorded Azkaban so that I didn’t have to miss it during the birthday festivities. But the airing was in the mid-afternoon and would end just half an hour after dinner, so I’m guessing that this is a case of the Mandela effect. In fact, I’m now recently remembering briefly hurrying up back to my room at 5:30 PM to stop the recording, then hurrying back down again.

Back in 2010, meanwhile, things were different. Obama was starting to turn out too underwhelming in spite of his first presidential campaign (causing disappointment and anger towards the left from the general public), leading the GOP to act worse by getting fully absorbed with birtherism and the Tea Party and basically going full-blown boomer-con (causing horror and repulsion towards the right to apparently only me), a trend that continued all the way through the decade and into this decade thanks to the behavior of the fringe left and the ineffectual establishment Democrats.

Touchscreen phones were on the rise, and HD widescreen TVs were starting to come out. Major movies released that year included the anticipated and stupendous (seeming) finale Toy Story 3, the beginning of the (seeming) end of the Potter franchise with Deathly Hallows Part 1, Despicable Me (debuting future boomer-con meme fodder, the fucking Minions), a surprise, smart, and engaging success for DreamWorks with How to Train Your Dragon, Christopher Nolan’s fantastic mind-trip known as Inception, and Tim Burton’s digital drug trip adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (paving the way for the decade’s/present’s continuing dumping of Disney Live-Action Remakes).

I had just graduated high school that summer and was finishing up my first term at college, all online courses, by the time of recording the movie. Also, the world learned that Juggalos didn’t know how magnets functioned.

Once again, please note that while I may comment on most of the commercials featured, I won’t comment on every single one, as I don’t have anything much to say about them and will only feature advertisements about which I can say things.

To view all the advertisements, watch the videos that start off the sections (or if you’re reading this on Deviantart, click on the pictures to view the ads on a YouTube super post, complete with appropriate time stops!).

There was an intro scene I rediscovered when I make the stereo conversions, featuring Bonnie Wright, who plays Ginny Weasley. The special ABC Family bug for 25 Days of Christmas featured a CG Santa climbing a ladder and blowing on the screen, as if it was a cold window, and drawing the bug on the screen.

The first ad break plays after Harry arrives at the Leaky Cauldron and Fudge says to him, “Oh, and Harry, whilst you’re here, it’s best if you didn’t, uh...wander [or wonder].”

It starts off with an ABC Family bumper advertising first looks and behind-the-scenes material for the newest Chronicles of Narnia movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, throughout the Harry Potter weekend event, with an ad for the movie playing immediately after the network bumper.

The previous two Narnia films, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005) and Prince Caspian (2008), were released by Walt Disney Pictures, who co-produced them with Walden Media. The latter of the two films underperformed at the box office, however, and Disney didn’t want to make the remaining Narnia films, with 20th Century Fox ultimately taking Disney’s place and releasing Dawn Treader, the only Narnia film to be released in 3-D, as part of the 3-D movie resurgence in the early-to-mid 2010s.

There would’ve been another movie after this one, The Magician’s Nephew (chronologically the first in the series, but published after the first book The Lion…), but in Fall 2011, the contract between Walden Media and the C.S. Lewis estate expired. The rights would go to Netflix in October 2018. And of course, Disney infamously bought 20th Century Fox in that year, too...

However, in 2020, future Barbie director Greta Gerwig would take the helm for the Netflix adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew and seemingly persuaded the streaming service to give her film an IMAX theatrical window on Thanksgiving 2026 before it hits streaming on Christmas of that year. Most notably, and oddly, she’s seemingly having Meryl Streep voice Aslan, the talking Jesus lion. The role of Aslan was previously voiced by Liam Neeson.

The references to Dawn Treader’s release date as “this Friday [December 10, 2010]” helped me narrow down the recording date somewhat when I was first digitizing the ad breaks.

The major change to Outback Steakhouse’s commercials between now and 2010 (and even 2019, when I noticed that they didn’t seem to change much since the start of the decade) are the ads starting off with a solid color, usually red, and the Outback “mountain” graphic fading in and zooming into the opening scene of the ad (that or it would just start off with a shot of the advertised food). A similar event to the earlier one would close the ad with the logomark appearing with the mountain.

I still don’t eat there, either.

As aforementioned, this was another cultural trend that seemed to be in full force in the early 2010s, but seemed to stop just as quickly near the end of it. 3-D TVs were popping up with the event of 3-D Blu-Rays, most likely due to the success of other 3-D movies like James Cameron’s Avatar from the previous year and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (or Underland). In fact, for a brief time in 2011, on Comcast VOD, there was a section under free movies showcasing 3-D movies for 3-D televisions, like MPA(A) ratings compilation member Haunted Castle (2001).

In my original posting, I made some semi-joking complaints about this one, but now I have a few more. In the ad, as the Kisses get inspected, there’s a check for “Yummy” and “Merry.” Just what exactly would “merry” imply? What happens if a Kiss gets marked as “merry” instead of “yummy?” They also get a “Naughty” or “Nice” checklist for inspection? What would happen if it gets “naughty” instead of “nice?”

Hmm, LEGO figures in an epic, awesome battle to save imagination? They’d ultimately be around four years off. Did Phil Lord and Christopher Miller play LEGO Universe when it came out? Also, the WB logo, very like the game’s distributors, can’t be too much of a coincidence.

Having voices seemingly come from Christmas tree ornaments? I’d say that Genuardi’s does indeed have everything for Christmas Holiday...baking. Also, why does the skunk not smell anything? Shouldn’t he be a typical depiction of a skunk and at least smell his own stench?

I think that’s what one would associate with a standard depiction of a talking skunk. I’m guessing that it was an attempt at being ironic, with the smelly skunk unable to smell anything, but how would that be preventing him from smelling anything? Strange they didn’t go that same path for their second commercial during the movie.

This is a commercial not for something nationwide, but for something local; the Patriots Theater at the War Memorial in Trenton, NJ, in this case. Local ads breaking into commercial breaks was a common thing since, at least as I can recall, the 2000s and early 2010s and maybe the 1990s and earlier. In 2019, I think it was still happening, but since then, I haven’t seen many similar cases.

This is the second Genuardi’s ad I mentioned earlier, ending with a deep-voiced (Russian-accented, maybe, possibly in reference to Russian composer Tchaikovsky, whose œuvre, as mentioned in the previous ad, includes The Nutcracker) nutcracker saying smoothly and calmly, “I like nuts.” The ad could’ve been better if it ended with a less obvious favorite food for the nutcracker.

The break ended with a network bumper before returning to the movie, specifying that behind-the-scenes looks at Dawn Treader would be shown during breaks for Order of the Phoenix (2007), scheduled to air the same night at the current Azkaban airing at 9 PM Eastern, 8 PM Central. Azkaban resumed with the shot of the window, just before the Monster Book of Monsters scene.

There was another treat I rediscovered when re-digitizing these ads. It was a bug on the left corner of the screen stating what was playing now, what was coming next, and what will be airing that night (“tonight”). I added the first occurrence on the stereo videos to preserve a rare bit of ABC Family ephemera, as these bugs would appear after ever ad break onward.

The second break begins after the zoom into Harry’s pupil after the Dementor attack on the Hogwarts Express.

ABC Family took a page from popular sister network Disney Channel and created original movies back in the late 2000s all the way to the early 2010s. I’ve still never seen it, but I think the plot of Christmas Cupid involves Cupid/a Christmas angel/whatever getting someone to fall in love on the holiday. A stern, Scroogean businessman maybe? Some lady, as seen in the spot? I don’t know.

Having also never seen this film, all I can say is that Gulliver’s Travels was a late 2010 family comedy based on the classic book of the same name, noted for featuring Jack Black, continuing the 3-D craze of the era, and lambasted for being lame and childish. Also, to all those who watch the videos, be warned: This ad will be repeated a lot in the breaks; it’s possibly the most-repeated ad of all the breaks!

While bad, “Gulliver’s Travels” wasn’t the most abhorred film of 2010.

The ads for Fisher-Price didn’t seem to make any drastic changes between the 1990s and 2010. I know this since I’ve been converting and re-converting commercial breaks from VHS recordings of ABC soaps that belonged to my late mother. In 2019, while I would never buy their products then or now, they seemed to be more interesting then, with an adult taking place in a seemingly dramatic situation only to reveal that it was very likely the imagination of the infant playing with the toy.

After this, we get a Resse’s miniature ad lacking a spiel from Bojack Horseman. I’ve mainly attended family Christmas get-togethers, usually on Christmas Eve, and we’ve never had any peanut butter and chocolate hors d'oeuvres...or at any time, for that matter.

Another spot for a 3-D TV, featuring a father magically cutting out a cubic section of an aquarium with fish in it, and not affecting the surrounding area. The family, made up of the father, a young son, and a wife who looks disinterested to be there, takes the section home, tying it on top of their car, and the father stuffing the aquarium section into his flatscreen television set. All this occurs while “Hey Soul Sister” by Train plays. No, it’s exactly as I’m describing. Maybe I shouldn’t have wasted my two screenshots on mundane things in the ad (again).

After an ad for Super Scribblenauts for the DS, a commercial plays for the home media release for the third and newest entry to the Twilight saga, Eclipse. In that, one of the female sparkly vampires from the previous films has turned into Ron Howard’s daughter and goes to Seattle to create an army full of innocents-turned-sparkly-vampires to attack the mumbly, mopey butterface Bella Swan (played by real-life butterface Kristen Stewart) and the group of sparkly vampires known as the Cullens, for killing the redhead’s boyfriend/leader to save from a trap the leader lured her into (not a really difficult task).

But that’s not the important part--the real major event of the story isn’t the formation of a sparkly vampire army, oh no. The big enchilada is this: Who will Bella choose to be in love with??? Will it be immortal mumbling mopey sparkly vampire Cedric Diggory? Or mortal Native American, easily-agitated shapeshifter/werewolf-thing Jacob who for some goddamn reason never wears a shirt? Who will it be??? WHO????

I think 2010 was the last year that cell phones came with a physical keyboard rather than an onscreen one. In fact, I think if the young people of today saw such a phone, they’d probably share the same reaction as the orange thing here. The campaign for the AT&T LG smartphones of 2010 featured these strange, tiny creatures. This one has a small orange thing.

Another one that appears much later features a tiny, purple cycloptic thing. I don’t know why these creatures were being used to advertise smartphones in 2010.

When some people were saying that 1990s nostalgia would be prominent in the 2010s, they weren’t kidding. First, 3-D TVs were coming around, but not like the ones Jim Carrey was planning in 1995, and now product boxes with frighteningly over-excited kids using the product, sort of like something you’d see in a ’90s commercial. Or maybe the true ’90s vibe is the fact that Crayola was selling something barely related to crayons.

In a jarring change of tone, the movie resumes when Harry comes to on the Hogwarts Express after Lupin used the Patronus charm on the Dementor. As the scene progresses, the Now/Next/Tonight bumper from earlier reappears, but something else also comes up eleven seconds later.

It’s a bug/ad taking up the bottom third of the screen for Christmas Cupid airing December 12 [2010]. Alas, many similar distracting bugs for the network’s other shows appearing during other programming are still very common today, and not just on the former ABC Family, Freeform.

The film goes on and on, cutting to another commercial break after Harry apparently finds The Grim in his teacup.

A few ads, like the somewhat repetitive 3M Command ad here (and the later Mario ad), best show how my old 4:3 CRT TV cropped things at a time when widescreen HDTVs were starting to take over.

In late 2015/early ’16, I created the mono YT uploads in ArcSoft ShowBiz (which came with my converter) in 16:9, leaving the videos pillarboxed, making this more apparent. In summer 2025, I created the uploads in the original 4:3 aspect ratio.

The ads continue with the primordial voice-to-text smartphone feature, all while a wretched song is sung by a singer who sounds like an unholy mixture of Cindy Lauper and a mentally retarded child. “We sailed away on wintuh’s day; with feet as malleable as clay…”

This was another type of ad I’ve seen a lot around this time, with a celebrity with a cancer-stricken child (or children) advertising the services of St. Jude’s Hospital. Others I’ve seen featured Jennifer Aniston and Robin Williams. We don’t see such ads now.

The one I’ve seen around 2019 is a longer ad featuring the original founder of St. Jude’s appearing in footage as his adult daughter, Marlo Thomas of That Girl fame, explains more about the hospital. The more common ones today are more depressing, featuring parents of patients being sad and fearful about their ill children (some toddlers!), also great in length.

So I guess Johnsonville isn’t really fond of tacos, then.

Ah, look. A bunch of nuts looking for something sticky. Where will they find it?

Of course, in the caramel in PayDay bars. Where else did you think they’d get it?

Now this is definitely a product of it’s time. This was around the time Blockbusters all around the nation were closing, sadly. An era was definitely coming to an end. I remember there being a Blockbuster in the Hartford Corners shopping center in the late 2000s. I would pass it whenever I was on the school bus.

As 2010 was coming to an end, it would ultimately be closed and the building where it stood remained unoccupied for a while. It’s current location is (very likely) a Jersey Mike's sub store, whose commercials are now hosted by Danny DeVito.

I also remember visiting another nearby Blockbuster occasionally when I was younger, during the late ’90s and even renting a Rugrats Halloween tape once. I recall Blockbusters always being here but not visiting them often because I was young and complacent and thought they’d be around forever. Now, if you want to go to a Blockbuster, you’d have to go all the way to Bend, Oregon (and this wouldn’t be a major problem for readers local to that area, but the rest of us…).

When I first created the blog entry in 2019, I forgot there was some behind-the-scenes footage of Deathly Hallows Part 1 (and another one was used as a screenshot for another upload, too!). This was notable because first look footage was usually saved for just before the film was released and DH1 was already in theaters for a few weeks by this point.

Additionally, I’d like to point this out: When DH1 was first rated by the MPA(A), it was PG-13 for “some sequences of intense action violence and frightening images.” Shortly thereafter, it was amended to “some sequences of intense action violence, frightening images, and brief sensuality.”

After some footage showcasing the context and backstage production behind the Seven Potters scene, we resume the ads, featuring a then-standard Mucinex ad with the family of sentient mucus (which remains a staple of their campaign, even today) and another local ad interruption, this time from Comcast advertising their VOD service now online. Coincidentally or not, 2010 marked the ten-year anniversary of the original Dora the Explorer.

The “Let’s rock!” doll in the Xfinity ad is rather irritating. Yeah, this time it was probably deliberate, but it was still a tad too much. Comcast’s recent ads have been pretty annoying, actually. There was one a few years back that featured a young girl reluctantly pushing her obnoxious younger brother in a toy car and it ended with him saying to her rudely, “Could you be less sister and more car?!” Thankfully, the current ads (as of this writing) about the Gold-Rush-style Boomtown are much more tolerable.

A tiny bit of the Windex ad that was overtaken by Xfinity’s plays, then we see an ad for the premiere airing of The Gruffalo on, according to the ad, “Thursday at 7/6c,” featuring the voices of Bellatrix Lestrange, the late Rubeus Hagrid, and the late Ollivander all in one program! Along with James Corden. According to its IMDb page, The Gruffalo premiered in the US on December 9, 2010. Also, why is ABC Family advertising it as an “ABC Family Original Special” when it was a co-production between the UK and Germany and the network had no involvement with it whatsoever?

After that, we return to 2004 where the trio are going to Hagrid’s Care of Magical Creatures class. Later on, another ABC Family programming ad/bug appears, this time for The Gruffalo. This bug, along with the one for Christmas Cupid, appeared frequently throughout the returns to the movie. In fact, only one other commercial break return, apart from the movie’s start, had no bug for either movie. Only the first two instances of these kinds of bugs (one for each respective film) are included on the videos for redundancy reasons.

Fade to commercial after Hagrid takes the injured Draco to the Hospital Wing.

As previously mentioned, Blu-Rays were starting to become popular and Disney would release many of their films on the format as special editions before putting them back in the dreaded Disney Vault, never to be seen or heard from again.

One such example of this was the two-movie release of Fantasia and Fantasia 2000, in honor of the former’s 70th anniversary. In 2019, I was naïve enough to think that things would be different thanks to Disney+, or that the Disney Vault would somehow be gone for good. However, not everything was all bad, as the streaming service gave us some extra rarities also, however briefly.

Having converted some ABC soap ads, I can’t help but notice how the Ice Breakers ad seems evocative of, of all things, an ad for Bioré Pore Strips, c. 2000. Maybe it’s because of the dancing people and somewhat rave-like atmosphere in both, as shown in the below screenshots from the latter ad.

Yes, these are all indeed shots from a Bioré ad from August 30, 2000.

Another ad for the Samsung 3D TV plays, but this time featuring the Shrek characters, for the home media release of Shrek Forever After. Also, what kind of effect would it have on the aquatic life in the “box” of water when it would be taken home and placed in their TV, how would they react to swimming around in a human living room?

“[A] world long forgotten” indeed, as Epic Mickey was probably the first time in a while that Disney featured something, anything, that revolved around their classic characters, and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, or anything animation-related in general, as opposed to their live-action tweeny-bopper stuff (notorious examples include Hannah Montana, Suite Life, and High School Musical) they were pushing on us throughout the 2000s.

What’s even more notable was that Epic Mickey came out almost two years before Gravity Falls did, which would further force the tweeny-bopper filth out of the public consciousness.

Although people weren’t that fond of the actual game play itself, they really did enjoy the story being a love letter to classic Disney and its overall edgy nature. A sequel was released called Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two to much less enthusiasm from gamers was the lackluster story, the short playtime, and some glitching. Worse, unlike its predecessor, The Power of Two wasn’t even a financial success, with sales matching only half of the first game’s profits.

But the ending of this story isn’t entirely sad. Epic Mickey would see an updated reissue called Epic Mickey: Rebrushed in September 2024, removing some bugs and improving other things.

After a well-publicized breakdown that dominated much of the mid-2000s news cycle (as opposed to more important things [for better or worse?]) as well as what would be revealed as an infamously restrictive conservatorship, the late-’90s Southern blonde bubblegum pop singer Britney Spears appeared to make a comeback by the end of the previous decade and the start of the new one, and would make a brief resurgence in 2011 with a new album and some new singles on the radio.

As for her perfume Fantasy, I neither bought it nor smelled so I can’t tell you the quality of it. I will say that she was no longer with Kevin Federline by this time, so it probably doesn’t smell like his armpit.

Conair doesn’t seem to have changed their ad style since at least the 2000s, with their logo appearing the left corner before a demonstration of the advertised hair care product, as seen in at least some ads from the 2000s. See the below screenshots from 2000 for comparison.

Yes, the ads have some major differences, but the overall gist of the company's advertising seems to be similar for, at least, a decade.

Shrek Forever After was advertised as the fourth and final chapter of the franchise, with audiences feeling that it was a major improvement over number three. In the years following Forever’s release, the Shrek franchise became the number one source for dank memes online and spread like wildfire. Local YouTuber Schaffrillas Productions, around the time I created the original blog entry, helped the film’s reputation grow significantly after he released his analysis video about it.

The franchise did indeed continue after the fourth one, with a spin-off released a year later, Puss in Boots. And, of course, that movie had a sequel 11 years later that surprisingly ended up blowing everyone away: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

As a result, everyone got excited, hoping a fifth Shrek film would come out. As it turned out, Shrek 5 was later announced to happen in 2026…and it was clear from initial announcement and teaser that it would pander to the 2010s Shrek memes and have a severe downgrade in animation.

We then return to Azkaban (the movie, not the prison--the latter’s fictional), with ghosts, carrying severed ghost heads, crashing through ghost versions of Hogwarts windows. These are probably the Headless Hunt who would often decline Nearly Headless Nick’s requests to join them. He’s had it rough, especially after he was turned down for the Free Masons after designing a slaughterhouse instead of an apartment building. Fade to commercial after Lupin finishes talking to Harry on the bridge.

After a PetSmart ad comes another pretentious ad for Eclipse, trying to make the film look like a bigger, epic tale that it actually is, focusing on werewolf/shapeshifter/possible pedophile Jacob trying to woo the butterface Bella.

When Googling Nutella for any information for comments I could make, I discovered that it was originally from Italy. How about that.

How come the guy on the left looks like Zach Braff yet isn’t? Also, out of all the campaigns I can recall in the 2010s, State Farm seemed to have changed the most yet remained the same. They’ve retained their famous jingle, but changed commercials.

Nowadays, there’s an odd situation going on that involves damaged stuff that insurance would cover, like a ghost popping up, and Jake from State Farm (played by a different actor than the other one from another series of ads a decade ago, who’s been in the role for a while) would give the victims insurance info.

This strange AT&T ad starts off at a football game after a team had scored a touchdown and we follow a player as he heads to his team’s locker room, then it turns to that of his college football team, then to that of his high school football team, then he gets into his dad’s car and we travel back to when he was a kid and the two went to get tickets to a football game.

However, it turns out that tickets are sold out, but luckily, in the early version of any digital version of event tickets, the father has downloaded them into his 2010 phone, and then we cut back to the end of the game we saw at the start of the ad to find that the little boy, who was the player, was watching the whole thing.

I’m guessing it’s implying a butterfly-effect-type thing, with the football player’s career happening thanks to the father using the AT&T phone for the digital tickets. Actually, as I’m typing it out, it makes perfect sense, mainly the use of the AT&T phone for the AT&T ad.

After another ad for Super Scribblenauts, a commercial for USPS plays. Here, a woman tricks her husband into shopping at the mall, as opposed the the more work-heavy shipping. The mailman tells her about easy shipping with Priority boxes (“If it fits, it ships.”) and the woman tells the mailman she’s aware of this as she gives him a package with such a box while her husband doesn’t remain any wiser about this new, easy way to ship packages while being forced to go to the mall for shopping. Bitch.

Yet another aspect of its time. The beloved toy store filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in 2017 following years of debt and poor performance and closed down a year later.

This was the result of playtime involving more screens and digital items and less toys, as well as struggling to keep up with, of all things, Wal-Mart and Amazon, and, most majorly, a disastrous $6 billion leveraged buyout in 2005 by private equity firms Bain Capital (thanks a lot, Mittens), Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., and Vornado Realty Trust leaving the toy store in even more debt and producing more mismanagement and more store quality deterioration.

In February 2019 (some months before I published the original version of this article), a company called Tru Brands Kids bought the company, the brand, and the IP (including Geoffrey the Giraffe) and opened up a few stores, including one up in North Jersey, in Paramus. However, thanks to COVID, any success they would have would be short lived.

The brand was sold to another company called WHP Global in 2021. This company says that they’ll open up new brick-and-mortar stores, complete with the original bright, cheery coloring, and general fun atmosphere that we loved about it as kids. There are also other stores opening and opened up in other different places, like cruise ships, airports, and even malls, like the American Dream Mall up in East Rutherford, and more locally in the Macy’s at Cherry Hill Mall.

Okay. That’s enough about Toys ‘R’ Us…

After an ad for Avery notepads (featuring Saul Bass’ original logo) and a brief glimpse of an item sold at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, we get an ad for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder, who would die later in the year that I uploaded the original mono ads to YouTube.

Man, remember 2016, when it was considered a very dark year due to many celebrities dying and the inevitable rise of the far-right coming as a surprise to everyone?

I didn’t see Mickey’s Christmas Special when it first came out, but I’m guessing that it’s a collection of classic Disney Christmas/winter cartoons based on the commercial. Dammit! Why the hell did I miss it if that’s the case?!

We return to the main feature as the Gryffindor students are on the stairs, just before the discovery of the missing Fat Lady. The movie goes on until the end of the Quidditch match scene, ending with the iris out as Harry is falling from his broom and Dumbledore casts the movie-only spell to stop him.

This may look like another commercial for Britney's Fantasy fragrance, but it's actually advertising another one of her perfumes, Radiance. Why does the fortune teller’s actress look like a dark-haired Naomi Watts?

This ad here is being mentioned once again to honor the late George Lowe.

The next new ad is a Walgreens ad (which apparently sells other items for Christmas in addition to medical stuff, at least in 2010), which features that strange “bow bow bow bow”-sounding instrument, similar to the one featured in background music in CatDog. I wonder what that instrument is? Maybe a guitar?

I didn’t have anything to say about the first Target ad in this break because I thought hard about what I would say. The first one focused on a massive gingerbread house fit for a competition with a barely noticeable blender/mixer nearby, then it cut to the blender/mixer against a red background, as if that was the important thing rather than the gingerbread house. Then I figured that it would make sense because the bowl was involved with the making of the massive house.

I tried to think of something for this one, with everyone looking at a home’s window with the lamp from A Christmas Story present. I’m not sure when it’s set, whether in 2010 or the setting of the film, based on the cars in the background.

Then it inexplicably cut to a pair of curtains available for purchase, as if they were a more important item than the lamp from A Christmas Story! Almost immediately thereafter, I figured that it was emphasizing the curtains to prevent a scene similar to the one outside the house, no matter what the time period, so this ad makes sense, too.

The movie returns with the iris in as Harry wakes up in the Hospital Wing and goes on until the end of the scene of Harry using the Patronus against the Boggart Dementor.

I don’t care! It’s “Ho ho ho!” Not “who who who!” Fix the ad!

This Stomp!-inspired Kit Kat ad seemed rather enjoyable to me. I wish Kit Kat would do this with their jingle more often. It’s an interesting twist on their tune.

This movie, The Tourist, starring the former Gellert Grindelwald, was directed by a German director actually named Florian Henckel von Donnersmark. It was his second after his acclaimed 2006 film The Lives of Others, following a Stasi officer spying on a man and his actress spouse. Because of the success of the previous film, he was allowed full creative control on this one, including casting.

Unfortunately, this would prove to be detrimental because the big-name celebrities cast in the leads basically took over and left von Donnersmark with little control over the final product.

Also worth pointing out: Jon Voight’s daughter signed onto this movie so that she could take a Venetian vacation. Another thing to mention: the creator of Downton Abbey, Julian Fellows, worked on the script for this movie, but only the setting of Venice made it into the final cut.

This is a reality show competition based upon Cake Boss, The Learning Channel’s show about the NJ-based family-run bakery. The bakery, however, is/was based in North Jersey, much like practically every media set in the Garden State. Hardly any, if any, fiction or programming is set in South Jersey and it seems that the outside world will only know about the state from its Northern section rather than anything else.

Given it was the early 2010s, I guess it could’ve gone worse.

After some local/Comcast ads for Toy Story 3 on VOD and Comcast Sportsnet showcasing the Flyers, we return to the movie with the trio walking outside just before Ron and Hermione argue about Crookshanks apparently eating Scabbers. Fade to commercial after Harry runs down the stairs after Trelawney’s prediction.

“I’m not even if sure they use tomato.” How could Domino’s not use tomatoes in anything? How could any pizzeria not use tomatoes in anything, given that tomatoes are used to make pizza sauce? Is there some sort of controversy about Domino’s not using tomatoes in their pizzas that I missed in late 2010?

After doing some research, I now think that this ad was a reference to Domino’s having a less-than-stellar reputation when it comes to their products, in stark contrast to their name in speedy delivery. The company successfully rectified this by not only altering their pizzas to be more tastier, but also appearing in self-deprecating ads, even featuring the CEO Patrick Doyle (not the composer), admitting their many notable mistakes. I think I actually do kind of remember these kinds of ads back in ’10, now that I think of it.

Confirmation that the ’90s are being referenced once again (to me, at least). I remember seeing a similar commercial back in 1999, on a now-erased double recording of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Garfield’s Halloween Adventure on my CBS affiliate, KYW-3, from the night of Friday October 29, 1999. Only the ad there was just one guy in a hospital and it was an ad for the Got Milk? campaign of the time.

This was a live-action Disney/Bruckheimer movie based loosely upon the iconic broom sequence of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment in Fantasia, then celebrating its 70th anniversary. This movie included some complicated stuff about wizards and the powerful Prime Merlinian and stuff. ...yeah. I also haven’t seen this movie in its entirety in almost over a decade.

You have to be living under a rock to not know what this is.

Another behind-the-scenes bit about the still-in-theaters DH1 plays after that, this time showcasing the return of David Yates to the director’s chair. I wasn’t too fond of him at first, after the Phoenix movie, particularly reducing Snape’s Worst Memory to Snape’s Worst Flashback (though that might be due to the regular screenwriter Steve Kloves not returning for this round), and the over-emphasis of teen drama, as opposed to more important and interesting things, in the Half-Blood Prince movie, but I’ve started to come around to him following Deathly Hallows Part 1 and I was so blown away by DH2 that he was ultimately redeemed in my eyes.

My opinion of him initially lowered following the poorly-done Crimes of Grindelwald, but then I discovered that it was the fault of then-CEO of WB, Kevin Tsjuihara, who forced the filmmakers to edit it down so that it could fit a smaller, more theatrically-sound length to basically increase profits with little-to-no regard for the story of the film, with a similar thing happening to Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Like BvS, there’s also an extended version of the film and the extended Grindelwald, while not extremely elevating the overall quality of the film, does create a much better movie than the theatrical one (kind of like Thomas and the Magic Railroad).

Shortly after the film came out, Tsjuihara was forced out of his job…after the discovery of an affair with an actress he promised to get roles and auditions with the “casting couch” method.

Anyway, we resume Azkaban with the iris into the executioner sharpening his ax and go on until Sirius, Harry, and the others leave the Shrieking Shack.

This was part of the Mama series of Wii games, including Cooking Mama and possibly others, showcasing a ridiculously simple and easy small story about various things, like cooking, babysitting, and crafts.

Saying Eclipse was the best of the series isn’t really saying anything.

I’m sorry if the comments are starting to get sparse, only the commercials are starting to become repetitive or I don’t have anything to say about the others. But this break is coming to an end and we resume as Harry and everyone leaves the hole in the Whomping Willow and fades to another break after Harry uses the Patronus charm on the Dementors.

Maybe then you evolved the smartphone. But over a decade later, it appears primitive, with the less smooth loading screen animation and the black screen keyboard. Does anyone even use a Blackberry anymore (seriously, even in 2025)?

Here’s a rather high-tech looking ad for a pregnancy test! You haven’t seen one before and we’ll probably never see one again.

We rejoin Azkaban with the iris in of Harry in the hospital wing and go back to ads after the executioner, MacNair, throws his ax into the pumpkin.

Last commercial break, people. It starts off with the fortune teller ad for Britney’s perfume and the 3M Command products ad.

A local insert Comcast ad for a trashy E! show that’s not The Soup plays A comment on the E! hosts used to tell about programs and movies on VOD whenever one used the service in the 2000s to the early 2010s. Why Comcast played it on the network formerly owned by the guy who created the CBN is a complete mystery (though the movie playing on this network is rather surprising, too, if you think about it).

Maybe the people in the next ad aren’t running to Comcast for jobs. Perhaps they’re running to complain about the advertising of E! shows on the same network that’s contractually forced to run The 700 Club.

After another ABC Family bumper mentioning Dawn Treader behind-the-scenes footage during Phoenix “tonight at 9/8 Central,” we return to the movie when Harry and Hermione run through the Forbidden Forest with Buckbeak and we ultimately finish the movie, leaving the split-screen end credits, common for TV airings of movies on ABC Family.

As seen, the 2000s were coming to an end, and since the 2010s were just new and didn’t form their identity yet, there are hints of the former decade still lingering around culturally, like overemphasis of tweeny-bopper nonsense on Disney Channel and Nick (especially with the former) and franchises from the previous decade. Trashy reality shows would still be prominent for a while.

But the new decade would gain its own flavor in many ways. Disney would refocus its efforts on animation, for starters. There would also be more media, both new and old, with a massive cultural impact, at least when compared to the 2000s. In fact, during this decade, the 2000s were discovered to have some impacts in pop culture, despite the heavy amount of remakes, poor movies, and generally poor life. And then of course, 2020s arrived and everything went to hell.

I still think it’s true that the year 2010 was a transition, not unlike that of a teenager undergoing puberty, between a poor decade and an improved one (at least in much of the first half), and these recordings showcase that. And as it turns out, other recordings too! When I uploaded the breaks onto YouTube, a commenter mentioned finding VHS records from the early 2010s and, as of early 2016, still does so themselves.