Thursday, June 21, 2007

Hare Jordan

Everyone remembers "Space Jam", the 1996 hit movie that paired the Looney Tunes characters with basketball legend Michael Jordan. But the movie itself found a lot of its inspiration in a series of Nike commercials about 5 years earlier. I know of only two, but there may have been others. The ads were a huge hit, driving sales and popularity for Nike, Looney Tunes and Jordan...as big expensive cross-promotions have a habit of doing. This particular ad is also one of the first modern uses of Marvin the Martian, and may have resulted in Marvin's popularity gain in the 90's. Why would they have chosen Marvin to advertise Air Jordan basketball shoes? Well, it's pretty obvious...he wears sneakers!

Not sure who provides Marvin's voice here. I'm told Noel Blanc did Porky at the end, and it sounds like Greg Burson doing Bugs.

[UPDATE - Bob Bergen e-mailed us to say: "Actually, that's me doing Porky in the Hare Jordon spot. Neil Ross did Marvin. And Greg Burson did Bugs. OH-I also did Porky's agent!!"]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As a 90-minute movie, it didn't work, and even as a 90-second commercial, it has trouble - the editing is darn near fast enough to give me an epileptic seizure, and it shamelessly recycles a number of classic gags (the popcorn bit from "Rabbit Punch", the "Is there a doctor in the house?" routine from "Hair-Raising Hare", etc.).

The animation looked pretty good, though. It's hard to tell in a YouTube file as heavily compressed as this one.

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