Welcome to the Director's Cut. These are the uncut and expanded versions of my most popular posts from nickdigilio.com — same topic, but with extra stories, takes, and details. Free readers get the full essay at the top. Paid subscribers get the uncut version. HEY! Join the Village.

We all watch TV. And if you’re like me: someone who’s been obsessed with pop culture since birth, then you probably have a soft spot for TV commercials. Not necessarily for the products they’re selling (although a few have made me switch deodorants), but for the characters that pop up in those ads.

That’s what this list is all about. The 20 most memorable, most entertaining, funniest, weirdest, most iconic commercial spokespeople and pitch characters ever to grace our screens, at 30 seconds or less.

I couldn’t think of a snappier title for this collection, so here it is: My 20 Favorite TV Commercial Characters. Not jingles. Not slogans. Not animated mascots. These are flesh-and-blood actors (or, in some cases, characters so strong they feel like real people) who delivered their pitches so well, they became household names.

These characters have been burned into our brains, quoted endlessly, parodied to death, and in some cases, even outshone the actual TV shows they aired next to. We saw them so often they became part of our lives, part of the furniture, part of the culture, and we liked it.

Now look, there have been a lot of great commercial characters over the years, and narrowing it down to just 20 wasn’t easy. I’ve left out some big ones.

Just to be clear: I didn’t include animated characters or costumed mascots, so that means no Tony the Tiger, no Ronald McDonald, no Energizer Bunny, no Geico Gecko (as lovable as he is), no Speedy the Alka-Seltzer boy (who’s frankly terrifying), and definitely no Pillsbury Doughboy, who, let’s be honest, gets real annoying real fast.

Also, a quick sidebar shout-out to Progressive Insurance, which deserves its own wing in the Commercial Character Hall of Fame. Seriously, Progressive is the most consistently funny, well-written, well-cast ad campaign on TV. Whether it’s Flo (played by the always-fantastic Stephanie Courtney), Jamie (the relentlessly chipper Jim Cashman), Dr. Rick (played to perfection by Bill Glass, helping people “not become their parents”), or my personal favorite, Mara, played with deadpan brilliance by Natalie Palamides, these characters are all great. So great, in fact, that I gave Progressive their own little category here. They’re not in the final 20, but they are absolutely worth celebrating.

So here we go: 20 commercial characters that left a permanent mark. From the ‘60s to now, from coffee to cars to cheeseburgers, these are the TV commercial icons who sold us stuff and stole our hearts in the process.

This is one of the most comment-ready posts I’ve ever written, and the Director’s Cut has all 20 entries with full write-ups, plus personal stories about growing up in Chicago glued to the TV, the local commercials that never left my brain, the commercial characters that scared me as a kid, and the ones I’m still quoting decades later.

Read more

Welcome to the Director’s Cut. These are the uncut and expanded versions of my most popular posts from nickdigilio.com — same topic, but with extra stories, takes, and details. Free readers get the full essay at the top. Paid subscribers get the uncut version. HEY! Join the Village.

Let me just start by saying this: I am not a strong swimmer. At all. In fact, I swim like a rock. So when it comes to movies about being caught underwater, being stranded in the middle of the ocean, or dealing with whatever the hell is lurking below the surface, I get seriously freaked out.

There’s something inherently terrifying about being submerged, about the unknown lurking just beneath you, about the idea that no matter how much you fight, the water always wins.

That’s why, after the early 2025 release of Last Breath, the underwater adventure thriller based on a true story and starring Woody Harrelson (read my review here if you’re interested), I put together my definitive list of the best underwater movies of all time. Because let’s face it — water is scary.

Before we dive in (pun intended), I made a few rules for myself while assembling this list.

• First and foremost, I did not include animated movies. Yes, that means no The Little Mermaid or any other animated film that takes place underwater, because while those might be fun, they don’t carry the same sense of realism or the visceral thrills of live-action water-based horror and adventure.

• Second, and this is an important one: No Avatar movies. Not only because Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water are, in my opinion, two of the worst movies ever made in the history of cinema, but also because they don’t count as “underwater movies” in any real sense. They are CGI-infested, overlong, bloated epics filled with motion capture blue aliens in a fake water world that does absolutely nothing for me. The Avatar films are a cinematic nightmare that I refuse to acknowledge in any legitimate way, so let’s move on.

• Third, I have excluded most submarine movies. I love submarine films. In fact, I would argue that submarine movies are an entirely separate genre that deserves its own list, and I will absolutely be making that list sometime in the future. So, while The Hunt for Red October, Das Boot, Crimson Tide, and Below are all fantastic films, they are not included here.

The films on this list are about the ocean itself being an enemy, about the horrors of being trapped below the surface, about the strange and often terrifying creatures that lurk beneath.

These are movies that make you question ever going in the water again, that tap into the very real fear of drowning, the unknown, and the isolation that comes with being surrounded by endless blue.

So hold your breath, because we’re going deep.

This is the most-read post I’ve ever written, and the Director’s Cut has all 15 films ranked with full reviews, plus more personal stories and why certain films on this list hit differently when you grow up terrified of the deep end of the pool.

Read more

Welcome to the Director's Cut. These are the uncut and expanded versions of my most popular posts from nickdigilio.com — same topic, but with extra stories, takes, and details. Free readers get the full essay at the top. Paid subscribers get the uncut version. HEY! Join the Village.

You know what’s funny? Every time some new “adult animated” show pops up on a streaming service, and people act like it’s this brand-new, edgy invention — like animation just discovered profanity and sex and politics yesterday — I want to gently take them by the shoulders, turn them around, and point them directly at Ralph Bakshi.

Because if an irreverent, TV-MA, adult animated comedy like Strip Law can debut on Netflix in 2026 with a big-name voice cast and a mainstream platform behind it, it’s because Ralph Bakshi kicked down the door decades ago and left it hanging on one hinge.

Bakshi is one of those names that, if you’re a real animation fan, if you’re a real film fan, if you’re someone who cares about the medium beyond “cute” and “family-friendly,” you say it with a certain kind of respect. Maybe even a little awe. Maybe with a little fear. Because his stuff is fearless. Sometimes messy. Sometimes infuriating. Sometimes brilliant.

Sometimes all of that in the same scene.

But it’s never safe. Never polite. Never designed by committee. He is an American animator and filmmaker known for fantastical animated films, yes, but even more than that, he’s the guy who proved animation could be personal, angry, sexual, political, confrontational, hallucinatory, adult, and absolutely auteur-driven.

And look, the basic history is kind of incredible on its own. Ralph Bakshi was born on October 29, 1938, in Haifa, in what was then Mandatory Palestine, and his family came to the United States when he was a baby.

He grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and that matters because you can feel it in his work. You can feel the city in his movies — the grit, the streets, the racial tension, the poverty, the heat, the danger, the music, the whole urban stew.

That environment doesn’t just influence him. It becomes part of his visual language.

He starts at Terrytoons in the most unglamorous way possible, as a cel polisher — literally cleaning other people’s work — and then climbs his way up to animator and director. Then he moves to Paramount‘s animation division, and eventually forms Bakshi Productions. This is not some silver-spoon art-school-to-Hollywood story. This is a guy who built it from the bottom.

And then comes the big explosion: Fritz the Cat in 1972. The first animated film to receive an X rating, based on Robert Crumb‘s comic strip, and it becomes a massive success. It’s still regarded as the most successful independent animated feature of all time, and whether you love it or hate it, it changed the game.

It broke the Disney monopoly on what people thought animation was “allowed” to be. Animation wasn’t just for kids. Animation wasn’t just talking animals doing musical numbers. Animation could be dirty, satirical, violent, political, and very specifically aimed at adults, and Fritz is the brick through the window that makes that point loud and clear.

Now here’s where it gets personal for me, because my first experience with Bakshi wasn’t in some classroom or film society setting. I saw Fritz the Cat when I was a kid, way too young, and it blew my mind.

Not because it was “naughty,” although, yes, it was, and it was X-rated, and that was part of the forbidden thrill. But because it rewired my brain about what animation could do.

I grew up on Saturday morning cartoons like everybody else. The classic stuff — the Looney Tunes, the Hanna-Barbera factory line, all of it. And then Bakshi comes along and says, no, no, no — animation can be a street poem, a nightmare, a rant, a fever dream, a cultural scream.

And once you see that, you can’t unsee it.

And it wasn’t just Fritz. It was what followed. The early ‘70s Bakshi stuff — the urban, cultural, racial explorations — the movies that felt like they were made by a guy who actually lived life, who actually walked streets, who actually watched people, who actually got angry. There was sex, drugs, violence, profanity, and this raw, abrasive aesthetic that was the opposite of polished. He wanted you to see the pencil, the sweat, the grime. He wanted the work to feel handmade and dangerous.

And then he swings into fantasy and does it his way. Wizards. The Lord of the Rings. American Pop. Fire and Ice. He uses rotoscoping — tracing live-action movement — to create this strange hybrid of realism and dream imagery that, when it works, is hypnotic. That technique becomes part of his signature, and it becomes part of animation history.

He directed nine theatrically released feature films between 1972 and 1992, and just saying that out loud matters. Nine. Theatrical. Feature films. In a world that didn’t want animated features unless they were safe, family, marketable, and merchandisable. And he did it as an alternative to mainstream animation with independent, adult-oriented productions.

He wasn’t just a film guy. Bakshi’s television work is a huge part of his legacy. He produced Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures in the late ‘80s, and later did Spicy City in the ‘90s, and he’s been involved in TV as a director, writer, producer, and animator. The whole deal.

And then, when he stepped back from features, he pivoted hard into fine art and painting, because he’s always been an artist first. He even co-founded an animation school with his son in the early 2000s. He’s been honored, too, with major recognition like an Annie Award for distinguished contribution to animation, and other tributes over the years, which is nice, because for a long time, he was treated like the troublemaker in the corner. The guy everyone benefited from but didn’t always want to invite to the nice dinner party.

And the influence is everywhere. Everywhere. Adult animation, as we understand it in pop culture, doesn’t exist without Bakshi blazing the trail. If you love edgy animated TV, if you love the fact that animation can be political and profane and risky and personal, you owe him. Even the stuff that isn’t trying to be Bakshi is able to exist because he proved the audience was there.

And that’s why I’m thinking about him right now, with something like Strip Law landing on Netflix, because that kind of mainstream adult animated presence doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Now, Ralph Bakshi made nine feature-length films, and what follows is my ranking of those nine movies, in order of preference, with some stories I’ve never told before. I’ve got Chicago theater memories, a grindhouse experience that changed how I understood an entire film, and a two-bus solo journey as a kid that turned into one of the defining moviegoing experiences of my life.

I admire all of these films on some level, even the ones that frustrate me, even the ones that don’t entirely work, because the point is they exist. They’re real. They’re audacious. They’re important. They’re historic. They’re the work of a guy with guts and balls and vision, who changed the rules of feature-length animation.

Ralph Bakshi is the king.

And here are his nine feature films, ranked by me, in order of my preference... and I can’t stress enough: You MUST watch the trailers that accompany each entry, because they are truly magnificent.

Ralph Bakshi’s Nine Feature Films: RANKED
(in order of preference):

Paid subscribers get all 9 films ranked, plus personal stories from Chicago grindhouses, solo bus rides to movie palaces, and more…. HEY! Join the Village

Read more