food network bobble-heads induce nightmares

Every year the Food Network sends up the holiday season with "Season's Eatings" (ah, the punnery) and usually one-hour specials abound. This year, their marketing campaign features these frightening spectres:


I'm wondering who exactly on the Food Network totem pole finds these things appealing to the eye? Deciding that their home-grown celebrities (they prefer the term "All-Stars" for above-mentioned one-hour specials) were undeniably the recognizable pull to viewers' sensibilities, they decided that low-budget CGI bobble-heads of their All-Stars were the best way to ring in the holiday ratings. Missing from this line up as pictured above is Food Network darling Rachael Ray, but believe me, she has a wide-smiled bobble-head of her own too.

These things terrify me. More terrifying: the word "holidazzle", tacked to their billboards of these demon-creatures. "Holidazzle" is perhaps newly my least favorite advertising-spawned word.

Even scarier are the animated commercials on the Food Network, each character voiced by its actual human counterpart, using coined phrases by the human counterparts as they hawk non-denominational holiday dishes. Even more visible is the terrible production quality of these bobble-heads, with choppy animation and unnatural joint movements. Exactly who was behind designing these unholy beasts? Giada "knocked-up" DeLaurentiis should be offended by the harmonica-shaped smile they bestowed her CGI doppelganger. Paula Deen comes somewhat closer to reality where Alton Brown (I suppose that's him) is unrecognizable. Both Bobby Flay (yuck) and Guy Fieri (from a growing and disturbingly long line of "Next Food Network Star"s) look demonic, and Fieri more so like a stegosaur. I bet you Guy is stoked that he's been promoted up the "All-Star" ladder enough to earn himself his own hideous bobble-head.

Dear Food Network, what the f*ck were you thinking?

creepy factor: HIGH