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Real Men of Genius

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Real Men of Genius is a popular long-running humorous series of one-minute-long American radio advertisements for Bud Light beer created by copywriter Bob Winter. Each sixty-second ad pays mock tribute to an "unsung hero". The series began in 1999 and was originally called Real American Heroes. The name was changed after the 9/11 attacks, as Anheuser-Busch felt that they could not continue to use the term "hero" in that context after so many people had performed genuine acts of heroism. As of 2006, over 100 installments in the series have been produced. Winter's campaign has since become the most award-winning radio campaign in the history of advertising. Television versions have also been produced of some of these spots beginning in 2003. The first two TV versions were "Mr. Footlong Hot Dog Inventor" and "Mr. Really Bad Toupee Wearer".

The ads feature a somber-but-sarcastic announcer (Pete Stacker) and an unctuous rock singer who echoes the announcer's sentiments over schmaltzy "dramatic" piano music. The rock singer's vocals are by one-time Survivor singer David Bickler (not the band's founder and frontman Jim Peterik as is often reported). The music, designed to spoof the 1980s power ballad and 1980s advertising, was composed by Sam Struyk and Sandy Torano at Scandal Music, Chicago. A female gospel-style chorus is also heard in many of the ads.

The popularity of the series, which is seen as a parody of 1980s beer advertising (including Budweiser's own from that era), has led to many of the commercials being traded on peer to peer file sharing networks. There were a few sites on the internet that had most of the ads in MP3 format. Sometime around August 2005 the owners of these sites were sent a letter from Anheuser-Busch asking that the advertisements be removed. In 2003, a CD with 20 of the commercials (including two not aired) was released by Budweiser, and in 2005, a 3-CD set containing 59 commercials (one was a duplicate) was made available.

Starting in 2006 some of the commercials were recorded as 30 second spots. This was done to accommodate the desire of RJ[Clear Channel] Radio and other radio companies to air shorter commercial breaks.

In the fall of 2006, Anheuser-Busch sponsored a comedy tour titled "Real Men of Comedy" starring John Heffron, Joe Rogan, and Charlie Murphy. This tour featured the announcer and singer from the Real Men of Genius commercials performing several of their famous commercials at the beginning of the show.

The following is a complete list of all the "Real Men of Genius" commercials, according to Anheuser-Busch:

2000 commercials

2001 commercials

2002 commercials

2003 commercials

2004 commercials

2005 commercials

2006 commercials

  • Mr. Enormous SUV Driver
  • Mr. Boneless Buffalo Wing Inventor
  • Mr. Hot-Dog-Eating-Contest Contestant
  • Mr. Really Loud Cell Phone Talker Guy
  • Mr. Half-Time Shooting Contest Contestant
  • Mr. Way-Too-Proud-of-Texas Guy
  • Mr. Really Big Golf Club Maker
  • Mr. Hair Gel Over-Geller
  • Mr. Fantasy Football Manager Guy
  • Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy
  • Mr. Exotic Cowboy Boot Wearer
  • Mr. Ultimate Philadelphia Sports Fan
  • Mr. Apartment Next to the L Tracks Guy
  • Mr. Cell Phone Holster Wearer
  • Mr. Artificial Tree Maker
  • Mr. Holiday Gift Regifter Guy
  • Mr. Taco Salad Inventor Guy
  • Mr. Fancy Coffee Shop Coffee Pourer

2007 commercials

  • Mr. Chazz Michael Michaels (re-release of 2001's Mr. Professional Figure Skater, but specially branded for the 2007 film, Blades of Glory)
  • Mr. Doggy Day Spa Operator
  • Mr. Overzealous Foul Ball Catcher
  • Mr. Tollbooth Collector
  • Mr. Ceremonial First Pitch Thrower Outer
  • Mr. Automatic Tax Extension Filer

Parodies of the series have been created, including:

  • "Real Otaku Heroes," celebrating bizarre parts of anime fandom.[1]
  • The online film site atomfilms.com features a video entitled "Real men of the Empire"[2], in which a fictional "Corellian Ale" company in the Star Wars universe pays tribute to "Mr. Death Star Gunner".
  • SeaWorld plays parodies of the "Real Men of Genius" commercials during a few of their shows - these too are produced with the same voice actors and have the same lyrics (except of course the Mr. Genius).
  • A Minneapolis radio station, after 9/11, parodied the ads with real F(bleep)ing S(bleep)bags, featuring Osama Bin Laden as the subject.
  • Radio talk show host Glenn Beck parodies the ads as "Real American A-Holes".
  • In his latest CD, "Never Scared" Chris Rock spoofs this with "Real People of Ignorance". There were 2 installments of this: "Mr. Friend of a Rap Star" and "Ms. Girl With A Tattoo On Her Pussy".
  • Real Men of Genius have also recorded parodies of these ads for the Bob and Tom Show.
  • Rep. Mark Green, the Republican candidate for Governor of Wisconsin in 2006, had a radio political attack ad called Wisconsin Men of Greed which questioned Governor Jim Doyle's tax policies. The political ad used the same style as the Real Men of Genius ads, though with a different announcer (Doug Jeffers) and singer than the Bud Light campaign [3].
  • Other political attack ads in Minnesota and Texas also took on an imitative theme of the Real Men of Genius ads in the closing days of the 2006 midterm election campaign [4] [5].
  • Voice actors Vic Mignogna and Steven Blum have started producing "Real Fans of Genius," which parody stereotypical anime fans.
  • The real life singers of "Real Men of Genius" also made an appearance before a game at Bank of America Stadium, dedicating a song to all the Carolina Panthers fans.
  • The G4 television show X-Play once parodied this segment using people who have done bad things in designing video gaming; the segment was called "Real Buttholes of Gaming", and two of these aired in the same episode, which aired in the summer of 2005.
  • During some Seaworld employee training videos, certain job postions are presented in the commercial format
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