Remember them? The Quiznos "hamster commercials"? They featured one or two of what most people believed were hamsters (but were actually referred to by the ads' makers as "spongemonkeys"), but with giant googly eyes and with a humanish mouth replacing their own mouths. One "hamster" strummed a guitar while the other sang mostly absurdist lyrics in a grating, awful, high-pitched voice. It was one of those so-bad-you-can't-turn-away efforts at advertising.
And they worked! Those strange ads generated a lot of publicity for Quiznos, which was riding high at the time with plans to challenge sub sandwich leader Subway. Those plans later crashed and burned, as we now know. But the commercials live on.
