A Few Reasonable Questions About The Strangest Commercial On Television


We’re all familiar with the Kia hamsters, yes? I imagine we are. The ad campaign has been around for the better part of a decade now, believe it or not. There was the commercial where cool hamsters point at cars while Black Sheep’s “The Choice Is Yours” plays. There was the commercial where three of the hamsters apparently became very famous and emerged from a car in formal attire to riotous screams from fans lining a red carpet. There was the commercial where they ended a violent robot war through the power of choreographed dance. They’ve all lived incredibly rich lives. I assume. I’m not sure what kind of life is expected from giant dancing hamsters who can drive cars. Maybe this stuff is all like a B/B+ for them. I could easily discuss this for an hour.

But I won’t because we have more specific business to get to. Like, for example, the most recent commercial in the campaign, which a) features a speedy baby hamster escaping a hospital, and b) you are also all probably familiar with because it is on television 100 times a week and the extended version has over two million views on YouTube.

Oh, did you not know there is a full extended version of the car commercial about a baby hamster escaping a hospital by leaping off the roof? Oh buddy. Oh, there is. And it is a lot.

Watching it a few dozen times, either passively on television or actively online like an extremely normal person, leads to a handful of… oh, let’s call them “very reasonable” questions. I think you’ll see what I mean.

What is going on here?

A recitation of the facts is in order, just so we’re all on the same page:

  • There is a baby hamster
  • The baby hamster is in what appears to be a standard hospital maternity ward
  • The baby hamster escapes on foot and tears ass through the hospital, skidding down hallways and through MRI machines and laboratories, breaking and destroying things at every turn
  • Everyone freaks out and tries to catch the baby hamster
  • The baby hamster makes its way to the roof and leaps off, using a blanket from a just-landed MedEvac’s stretcher as a parachute to glide in through the sunroof of a speeding car driven by other hamsters

The end.

Which, fine. Let’s just accept that all of this happens, because once you accept it you can dig a bit deeper and get to the real issues at play. Like, for example…

Why is the baby hamster trying to escape from the hospital?

This is the big question I have about all of this. Because if those are the baby hamster’s parents in that car at the end (stick with me), why didn’t they just go into the hospital and take the baby home? Like, through the standard discharge process? If the baby is healthy enough to sprint through the hallways and make a dramatic rooftop escape from about a dozen members of the hospital staff, I’ve got to believe the insurance company or program paying for its stay would be happy to let it leave.

So, again, why the need for the harrowing escape? This leads us to our next issue…

Is this some sort of secret government facility masquerading as a regular hospital, in which the government does tests on the giant dancing hamsters to unlock their secrets?

It’s a fair question. As we discussed above, in the universe created by these commercials, humans and giant hamsters have been living side by side for a while. And apparently some of them are even famous and beloved. The whole thing appears to be pretty normalized, kind of like a Bojack Horseman situation, but one where giant rodents drive cars and dance to hip-hop music. You wouldn’t think the government would set up some top secret facility in the middle of a heavy populated metropolitan area and go to great lengths to disguise it as a regular hospital, all for the purpose of performing tests on the hamsters that have become an accepted part of society.

And yet, in a way, doesn’t this scenario make more sense? What need is there for escape if the baby hamster isn’t being held against its will? And also…

What’s the deal with this kid?

Two possibilities, as far as I can tell:

  • The “hospital” has regular floors where normal medical things take place and the child is going to one of those
  • This kid is in on it somehow

But then why didn’t she try to stop him? This raises two new possibilities:

  • She is a double agent who secretly supports the hamster agenda
  • She is terrible at her job because children make poor high-level secret government operatives

A lot to consider here. In any event…

What is the government’s endgame?

I struggled with this. I felt liked I needed to know more about the world in the commercials before I got to the bottom of the mystery. Have there been giant dancing hamsters forever, or is it a relatively new development? How did they come about in the first place? Is this the result of evolution or some science experiment? What did they dance to before hip-hop was infected? Were there flapper hamsters in the 1920s doing the Charleston and such? And why this hamster? What was so important about it that it was the one they tried to keep in their facility? Are the hamsters growing restless? Are the people in this universe fearful that the hamsters are becoming more powerful and on a course to overthrow humanity like the whole thing is a plot from the CBS drama Zoo? Every question led to more questions. It was maddening.

But then I stumbled across this.

If this commercial is to be believed, and I see no reason any of us should question its authenticity, the giant dancing hamsters in the Kia commercials have either invented a way to travel through time or are capable of it biologically, and are using it to prank colonial Americans with surprise dance routines set to “Gangnam Style.” Perhaps this is what is going on here. Perhaps the government — or some sort of secretive quasi-government agency — is trying to unlock their mystery of time travel by performing tests on the baby hamster. Or, the even more sinister scenario: Maybe they were holding it hostage in exchange for the secret. Is that what’s happening here? Was the government holding a giant baby hamster hostage in a fake downtown hospital in order to force its community to turn over the formula for time travel, only to have the extremely nimble diapered hamster escape by leaping off the roof and through the sunroof of a speeding car driven by its family and/or the hamsters’ own high-level intelligence force?

I mean, we almost have to assume so, right? Otherwise this commercial would just be ridiculous and I would look pretty, pretty silly for writing over 1100 words about it.

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