Doc Brown in Argentina

It’s strange how sometimes commercials can expand on your experience of your favorite film franchises. I remember seeing a Star Wars-themed Energizer battery commercial in 1994 and freaking out. It had new footage of Darth Vader.

The recent DirecTV campaign (called “Fourth Wall”) that recreates popular scenes from movies tried for the same reaction, but doesn’t get much farther than “Hey, look at that.” The message of the commercials — DirectTV is in HD? has a bunch of channels? is generally good? — isn’t relevant to the gimmick. Still, it was a neat idea.

Another “recreation” that comes to mind is this 2006 Gatorade commercial, which recreated famous sports moments gone wrong to convey the precision of Gatorade’s…lab-coated researchers with beakers and pipettes? To tell me that every gram of salt in a Gatorade is measured out by a person wearing safety goggles? It’s so vague that I remembered the concept of the commercial five years later, but not the advertiser. I thought it had been a Nike spot.

Well, this is kind of cheesy, but kind of cool too. Christopher Lloyd and the Back to the Future brand have been doing commercials for the Argentine electronics chain Garbarino. Here’s the first:

And here’s another that I kind of like:

The best thing, with this second spot in particular, is how on-message the premise is. Doc Brown, an inventor, goes into the future and is wowed by all the amazing electronics he finds. I don’t know if Garbarino is any better or worse than any other electronics chain — I can see a campaign like this being done in America for a big chain like Best Buy or Radio Shack, and essentially lying about how amazing those stores are — but it’s cute. And we get to see my friend Doc on screen again! Hooray!

(There are a few more videos at the Garbarino YouTube channel as well.)