That has to be one of the strangest ads I’ve ever seen. Weird, ugly puppets, singing badly. With bad green screen effects. Who in their right mind would make this ad, and then try and sell sandwiches with it?

After seeing this commercial a few years ago, I talked about it constantly with people.

Sample conversation:

tIoP: Have you seen that Quizno’s commercial? The one with the puppets?

Victim: Uh huh. I’ve got to be going now.

After three or four spots, they replaced these weird puppets with a not-nearly-as-funny talking perverted baby. I missed those weird puppets.

One day, when I was working at a fine dining restaurant in Chicago that shall not be named (okay, it was Bin 36), I got into conversation with a couple of guys sitting at the bar. Turns out that they were the chief advertising guys for Quizno’s. Immediately I asked them about the puppets, and told them that they were my favorite commercials of all time.

“Oh, geez, those things.”

Clearly there was a story here. Turns out that the ‘Spongemonkeys’ was some British internet video that made them laugh around the Quizno’s office. They contacted the people who created the videos and asked them to make a commercial.

It didn’t go over well.

First, the only things people remembered from the commercial was the puppets themselves. People also remembered the pepper bar. But not the sandwiches.

Second, people didn’t think it was funny.

Third, the franchise owners HATED the commercials. One guy called them up and asked why they were advertising his sandwiches with dead rats.

The ads were pulled.

And television has never been the same again.

Postscript: Absolutely because of the commercials, I did try Quizno’s for the first time. It was gross, and I’ve never gone back. Turns out the voice of the perverted baby was the guy who played Lust on “Herman’s Head.”

I have no idea where the Spongemonkeys went off to. But I miss them.