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“A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch!”—Ralphie Parker, “A Christmas Story”

Anyone else feel a little let down by “Lost?”

During “Lost” last night they ran another commercial for the fictitious Hanso Foundation—this time plugging the web address http://www.sublymonal.com/.

So I go check it out. What you find are six TV screens rotating around in a circle with the word “OBEY” in the center. Could this be somehow related to the new hatch Eko and Lock found in last night’s episode—the one filled with TV monitors observing other hatches on the island?

I clicked around and eventually got some sort of message that features the words “Code” and “Heir Apparent.” It makes no sense. So I Google the word “sublymonal” and find a Wikipedia entry that included the following:

This term was also used in a sprite commercial according to this website: http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=42893 The site sublymonal.com shares the same nameservers as coca cola.

Lymon is a conflation of lemon and lime and the long running advertised flavor of Sprite, the commercial's sponsor.

The link in the entry leads to a Marketing Daily article on Sprite’s new ad campaign, which includes this tidbit:

The spots carry the line, "Welcome to Sublymonal advertising. Don't worry, it will only affect your brain." The ads sign off with "Obey," which echoes the 12-year-old "Obey your thirst" Sprite tagline.

I swear, I felt just like Ralphie. What a rip off!

As for the episode itself—there was literally a question mark on the ground? **groan** Why not have a big “X” to mark the spot? And why doesn’t Locke seem to be interested in following that vacuum tube to see where it leads? That was the first thing I thought of.