“How Many Licks”
Commercial: https://youtu.be/O6rHeD5x2tI
My Rhetorical analysis is on the Tootsie Pop “How Many Licks” commercial. I chose this because it is such a classic commercial that literally everybody knows about. Meanwhile it also does have some rhetoric in it. The Commercials theme is too seeing how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop. The kid is walking through a forest of some sort asking wild animals “How many licks do you think it takes to get to the center of the tootsie pop,” and each animal just passes him along until the last animal. The first Rhetoric is repetition. Next the author uses imagery because of the different animals and also the kid has no pants on. I am sure that there is more rhetoric in the commercial, but those are the two most abundant devices.
The most abundant Rhetoric is repetition. The kid goes through the forest and ask four different animals the same question. “How many licks do you think it takes to get to the center of the tootsie pop.” They all have similar answers and say to “ask the next blank (whatever the next animal may be.) The kid gets nowhere until he gets to the end. The repetition of the question makes the viewers more engaged because they are all wondering the same question as the kid. The line of Repetitious question and answer eventually stops and the reader somewhat gets an answer to the question. Repetition is a really easy rhetorical device to stop and the commercial has lots of instances where repeating occurred.
The next rhetorical device I thought of for the commercial was imagery. Imagery is easy when you are looking at a commercial because there are many things to look and as a viewer you don’t have visualize much of anything. However, the commercial is set in black and white. This automatically gives off as something that is older. Next you may notice that the kid has no clothes on. After watching the video several time, I noticed that the kid was walking in the forest naked. Many people would not notice, nor give it a second thought. However, I think that was intentional and can also be counted as imagery.
The “How Many Licks” commercial is a very classic commercial and it has a lot of rhetoric to offer. Some examples I found were Repetition and Imagery. I am sure that there are many others that could be found in the commercial, but those were a couple I found to name a few.