DramaTel Phone Card Commercial: Ghetto in Every Sense of the Word
Monday, November 17th, 2008
Ridiculous Infomercial Review fan Sharon Haughey sent me an email about a commercial for a product called DramaTel. Billing itself as “The Almost Illegal Phone Card,” DramaTel allows a caller appear to be calling from another phone number so as to fool the recipient.
When I first saw the video of the DramaTel commercial, I was convinced it had to be some kind of a YouTube parody, but the website at www.DramaTel.com shows that this is indeed a real advertisement for a real product. Take a look for yourself:
What a perfect idea for the Jerry Springer and Maury Povich audience! The folks at DramaTel would make a bundle if they would advertise their phone card on those talk shows and then offer a paternity testing kit as a free bonus.
Not since the old Myotron infomercial have I seen a TV advertisement featuring such a cheap and hokey dramatization. This commercial really deserves to be called ghetto—in every sense of that word.
One part that doesn’t seem quite realistic comes at the beginning when the woman calls the playa and his phone identifies her as “Baby’s Momma.” How is that ID supposed to help him? It doesn’t tell him which Baby’s Momma is calling him. His caller ID should have said something like “Baby’s Momma #8” so he could know which one is calling.
That “voice changer” feature lets you disguise your voice as a male or female. The DramaTel commercial gives a brief example of the male voice. But unless the person you are trying to imitate sounds like Satan on a heavy metal record spinning backwards I’m not sure how useful this feature really will be.
There are a few shots shown here—such a the playa poolside and the white guy named “John Smith” befuddled by phone records—that offer hope that more ads or even a full-length infomercial will be coming forth from DramaTel. The commercial tells us that DramaTel can also help you “be a cheater.” I would love to see an ad where some man uses DramaTel to keep his playa hand strong.
I love the reaction when the cheater finds out he really isn’t talking to T-Money but to his Baby’s Momma:
The line “You been DramaTeled, playa!” is classic and deserves to be as famous as “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” I fully expect “dramatel” to be featured as a verb in the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.