r/BritishAdverts

60+ years of grading flour and the bowler hat stays glued to his head. He'll tip it, but he never lets anyone see what’s underneath. Absolute legend.

UPDATE: Here it is! https://youtu.be/xyqNwpTQhR4?si=t4Y69GnhDol4fSmg It was an Atari ST advert from 1991.

Unless I'm going mad... I've been looking for this for a long time.

It used to freak me out, and I’m surprised I can’t find it anywhere because it was on all the time. This would have been mid to late 90s (posssssibly early 2000s at the very latest). I am in the UKz

I can’t remember what the advert(s) was for but there were several variants with different people, as well as shorter and longer versions of the ad, there was clearly a big campaign going on.

People would talk to the camera, then peel back the skin of their faces to show that underneath they were mechanical, like robots.

I almost want to say it was for a camera or film, or blank VHS tapes or anything like that but that’s just a feeling, it could have been anything. For some reason I also seem to remember it having a reddish/purplish background, but that could just be an incorrect memory.

Like I said, it was on all the time to the point of being really infuriating, so somebody must remember... Or I'm just going mad.

It's not Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. The closest I could find was a John Cleese Magnavox advert but I'm not even convinced that one aired in the UK.

 

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📁 ARCHIVE RECORD | METZ — “JUDDERMAN” > * First Documented: 3 February 2000 > * Creator / Company: Bacardi Martini / HHCL & Partners > * Category: Forgotten Adverts > * Key Material / Feature: A Gothic forest television commercial in which the Judderman lures a lone traveller with Metz > * Status: Campaign introduced in 2000; Original Metz’s eventual discontinuation date is unconfirmed

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📝 Overview

Bacardi Martini’s Judderman campaign for Metz was created by HHCL & Partners in 2000 and centred on a Gothic forest television commercial shot in Budapest. The production used an existing film set transformed into an eerie, enchanted woodland, with deliberately old-fashioned camera techniques helping evoke early European Gothic cinema. Jonathan Burley was the copywriter, Ian Williamson the art director and Enda McCallion the director. Later advertising catalogues identify the film as Forest or Forrest, although an original 2000 title for the commercial has not been independently verified.

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💡 Why It Mattered

Its deliberately unsettling approach made an alcoholic drink seem like the bait in a folkloric cautionary tale, not a conventional refreshment. With puppet transformation, rhyme-led storytelling and creature-centred imagery, the campaign took a conspicuously cinematic risk in the competitive early-2000s flavoured-alcoholic-beverage market.

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💬 Archive Memory Check

Do you remember seeing the Judderman on television, and did it make Metz seem more intriguing or more sinister?

👇 Primary sources, technical records, and historical breakdown in pinned comment.

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🔗 Related Archive Links

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📣 Forgotten Adverts

📚 Forgotten Archive Index

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Forgotten things are still part of history.

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Turns out the actor commited suicide after being arrested on sexual assault charges.

Bit of a crikey situation.

Advert for those out of the loop and the news article

https://youtu.be/bVwudrg8Dz4?is=1BOjPEdW-rtyWTPU

https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/2196510/frazer-hammill-dead-emmerdale-happy

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Take a look here