Sunday, May 17, 2009

Fast Food #1: Taco Bell

Back when most of our money went to bills and rent a friend of mine would save all his sauce packets from Taco Bell. When he had enough he'd put them altogether in a pan, heat it up and then put it over noodles. He called this concoction "spaghetto". I never tried it, as these packets for me always ended up covered in dirt in the dark recesses of my car; cleaned out at the car wash, usually slick with the contents of some other packet that had burst in there as well. In other words, the packets=gross to me.

I'm sure most of the world sees the packets as little packages of intense flavor, and that's why they're used as a menu system on the Taco Bell site.

Most of the site is a large display of the product:

I'm disappointed there isn't more personality to the 4th Meal section. It's basically just a photo-gallery. The radio spots get me to smile, and my first thought was that they would translate that to the web somehow. The campaign is a bit old, maybe I'm just late.

The "Feed The Beat" section houses music videos and songs from various up-and-coming bands.

I can't help but feel that I'm looking at a dying breed. The age of "every site is a channel" is approaching a turning point, we'll either start seeing more interconnected pages with the major channels or a complete drop-off of these singular channels. I am most certainly repeating myself here.

Oh and there's a game...

My kingdom for a "Hide the Taco" game. heh. In this game you maneuvar a taco (seen at bottom) up through the row maze to finally deliver it to the singer (in hat at top). The rows at the top are moving ala Frogger.

Finding games on commercial websites has become something of a fascination for me. If you have been following my blog you'll know that at first I was critical of the use of sub-quality flash games. These games are usually thrown in for no other reason than a hope of increasing stick time. While this all remains true, I can't help but be drawn to pointing them out, and even...describing them now. It's like watching a few consecutive episodes of WWE, and finding yourself waiting for the next. Dear god I'm becoming a connoisseur.

There's another game on the site for Taco Bells Fruitista line:

You chuck fruits at different targets as they pop-up in the scene. The great part about this game, is that you can upload pictures of anyone or anything and use those as the targets. This customizing, which is absent in console games or most pc games (not counting MODS), is a great example of the unique features the web can bring to your interactive.

The last noteworthy part of the site is a Web-Cam Surf Spot section. You can flip between, what appears to be real-time, web-cams of surf spots around the country.

Nothing too exciting goin on at the moment.

/.hydra aiieee!.\

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Grey Matters

I'm a Digital ACD in Advertising land. I have been in love with the internet for over 10 years now. And I have a Red Bull problem. There I said it.

I travel around different industries every week or so and look for interesting and tasty interactive bits. I hope to make this a place for ad folk to keep up to date. And I just enjoy the spelunk.

Brain Pieces from Me

"There is a creative solution for everything."

"Sometimes, to be successful with Social Media, don't start a conversation. Start an argument."

"This is no longer the Age of Information, it's the Age of Opinion."

"The work that comes out of an Agency is the result of not going crazy while doing it."

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