Ad Spots of the Corn

These spots for Mattress World, a local seller of bedding equipment, have got to be the creepiest I've ever seen. As a repeating tag, the spot cuts from the husband-n-wife proprieters who deliver the usual boring specials-spiel, to a short sequence where a young, towheaded boy stands over a storeroom display mattress. Sleeping on the mattress, and looking rather like bloating road kill, is a supposedly "cute" little toddler boy.

The older kid puts a finger to his lips and harshly hisses, "Shhhhhh....". But instead of inspiring "awwww" from all the mommies watching, the untrained lad comes off like Damien's half-brother.

Or perhaps Dennis the Menace after being in juvenile hall a summer too many. The boy's face contorts into a mask that's hiding a sinister plot to smother the young brother when the camera's not looking (and you know MW has pillows nearby). Even worse, as the camera pans down to the victim tot splayed out on the mattress, the older boy's hand is lowered, and curls back and under like some kind of claw.

Eerily reminiscent of that classic black and white Nosferatu footage of the ghoul stealing into a house at night, his misshapen hands casting nightmarish shadows on the wall.

All this only takes about 2 seconds of air time, but it's so creepy, so skin-crawling that it dominates each and every Mattress World spot. My wife and I refer to the family as "The Corns", a homage to that awful "Children of the Corn" series about cult kids gone bad. The "parents" we call Bob and Betty Corn. The evil kid? He doesn't have a name: it's just, "The Corn Boy". The toddler doesn't have a name either, because we're convinced he's long since dead.

These spots have been running for years now, and the "actor" kids are likely grown up quite a bit. I wonder how the family sees these ads now. They give me the creeps.