Punch Bowl Winners' Circle: Mister Six

I’m all for amusement parks. God knows, while growing up in suburban New Jersey, I enjoyed many days of a misspent youth riding roller coasters at that grand utopia of adolescent frivolity known as Six Flags’ Great Adventure which (aside from that horrible Haunted Castle incident in 1984) always seemed to be a safe, fun place to hang out. As the good folks there so aptly put it, “There’s a time for work and a time for play.” This is true. However, there is ALSO a time to bust someone square in the mush, which is why I hereby nominate “Mister Six”, the current TV ad rep for Six Flags, as the latest recipient of this well-deserved honor. If you’ve never seen this so-called “ambassador of fun” in action, you can get a gander at the child-frightening insanity here:

Now that we’re all clear on who I’m talking about, can someone please explain to me how Uncle Junior from The Sopranos got stuck with this fucking job? Better yet, what Red Bull-swilling, coke-snorting genius in the Six Flags’ advertising department came up with this concept? I would LOVE to have been a fly on the wall during that discussion: “Hey, I got an idea for a great new family-friendly way to promote our product! Let’s get an old bald guy in a tuxedo to drive around suburban America in a red-and-yellow version of the Rosa Parks bus and coerce unsuspecting adults and kids into going on a field trip to one of our theme parks by showing off his obnoxious dancing skills! Doesn’t that spell FUN?! Hah?”

How about a nice pipin’-hot fistful of NO, Six Flags? Never mind that your TV spots disregard basic rules for personal safety (RULE NUMBER ONE being: Never let a STRANGER drive you ANYWHERE, especially if he promises that it’s someplace “fun”), but watching a skinhead version of Lew Wasserman freak dance to “We Like to Party” by the Vengaboys does not spell FUN. It spells CREEPSHOW. It doesn’t exactly make me wanna get on a magic bus ride with this Gooney Goo-Goo to Six Flags either, even if it does boast the Rolling Thunder, Lightning Loops and a Log Flume. It does, however, make me wanna go smashmouth on your mascot’s ancient ass. I wanna knock him right out of his two-tone boogie shoes and throw him in front of the Runaway Train. In fact, if I set foot inside the gates of a Six Flags ever again and I see this obnoxious geriatric spaz so much as “bunny hop” within 50 feet of me, I’m gonna send a big fat knuckleblast flying into that gaping Latex mug of his. So consider yourself warned, ya rug-cutting Crypt Keeper. Fortunately, I’m not the only one who feels like inflicting physical harm on this silly, street-swingin’ septuagenarian. The folks at Robot Chicken have already arranged an all-too fitting demise for him, which is, admittedly, a lot more violent than a biff to the cakehole. But hey…this is America and the right to bear arms, even the animated kind, is one I can support in this case. So, kudos to them for offing this dancing douchebag; Uncle June himself would have approved. Then again, I would have been happy if they’d used a giant Claymation fist, too.

—Kevin Byrne

Kevin suggested I write about Mister Six a while back, but since I don't live near a Six Flags, I hadn't been introduced to—that is, driven to the brink of insanity by—the commercial.

(photo: cracked.com/blog)