The Drink Cart: Muppets & Miyazaki Tears

The group chat started with war plans and Saratoga water trends and ended with the Studio Ghiblization of everything before a Muppet of Hayao Miyazaki cried in a forest.

Dear marketing fans and anyone who got added to the war planning group chat from Pete from accounting.

This week the internet saw a dude pour Saratoga water into a bowl with ice and the then collectively lost its mind.

Thus began one of the biggest meme-a-lanches of 2025. A stupid little video that somehow became the cultural flashpoint for main character energy and brand copycats.

Suddenly, Saratoga was the belle of the algorithmic ball, and everyone with a Canva login and a hot take decided it was time to tell the brand exactly how they fumbled the moment, calling for the heads of Saratoga’s social media team.

“They should’ve spent $2 million ” cried the TikTok strategists. “They missed the opportunity of a lifetime” screamed the Twitter reply guys.

Meanwhile, every brand from Walmart to McDonald’s to the Empire State Building ran onto the dance floor like your drunk uncle at a wedding with an open bar, trying to keep the meme alive for just one more song or scroll.

I liked this take: “Can I be honest? This is really not that funny. It was funny MAYBE once for two seconds a couple of days ago.”

But that wasn’t even the weirdest thing this week. No, that goes to the brand-new image model from ChatGPT, which now lets you turn yourself or your political leaders, your dog, or any meme into anything from a Studio Ghibli background character to a surreal Muppet version of your inner childhood.

Naturally, this brings us to the man who would hate all of this with the fire of a thousand soot sprites (for the record i have no idea what that means): Hayao Miyazaki.

The Studio Ghibli co-founder once once called artificial intelligence “an insult to life itself.” And now here we are, using it to render ourselves as whimsical, wide-eyed muppets.

Somewhere, Miyazaki is walking slowly through a forest exasperated, smoking a cigarette, whispering “not serious people.”

If you haven’t been turned into something with Studio Ghibli style by this point, or at least a muppet using ChatGPT’s new 4o image model, have you even experienced March of 2025?

And yet, we persist.

Three things that turned my brain into a muppet by ChatGPT

• “Wearing the skin of your enemy is wild.”

• All the details of the McDonald’s x Minecraft collab.

• The idea of oysters in cars is the next big idea.

A situation that is hard-boiled

Imagine being a skin care brand that is certified vegan that then capitalizes on a short term trend of egg prices. So on one had they are living up to the brand that solves problems simply. On the other hand, they are selling eggs.

So which brand value wins?

When your product is this iconic

When you have something as iconic as McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches and hash browns you don’t need a logo. You don’t need a headline. You don’t need a url.

Just the most insane close up photography and let the product speak for itself. What’s really interesting is that the agency did testing and 90% of people correctly called the ads as McDonald’s.

Try looking at these on your commute after a night out, it would melt my stupid little brain down.

I liked the one comment on these, “These ads are unfair.” Exactly.

Real Models? So Last Season.

So H&M just said “what if we cloned the models?” and then actually did it.

They’re working with agencies to whip up 30 digital doppelgängers. Yep, straight-up AI avatars of real humans.

This means they can pump out social media posts and ad campaigns faster than you can say “wait, is that even a real person?”

Welcome to 2025, where in a very Severance type vibe your model might be asleep while her AI twin is busy working the Instagram grid. Yes, it seems that the models own their twins and can rent them out to other brands.

What do you think? More unsettling than this week’s White Lotus? Or just sign of the times?

Ad history: Oscar Meyer Home Game

Since it’s finally Opening Day for Major League baseball, this was something we couldn’t pass on posting. This is such a classic local feeling ad featuring Chris Sabo of the Cincinnati Reds.

Drink Cart Programming note: If you’re looking for this week’s hat of the week? We’re going to probably only be talking about hats over on X. We’re continuing to focus on advertising and marketing here. I’m sure you are all devastated with this news.

Ad History: Pizza Hut Stuffed Crust Pizza

If you think I can not talk about the 30th anniversary of Pizza Hut’s Stuffed Crust Pizza on this newsletter, then you don’t know me at all. This revolution in pizza technology is still going strong.

And imagine a world where you used Donald Trump as your launch spokesperson. What a time to be alive. The hilarious backstory is that Trump secretly filmed the ad with his ex and his new wife Marla Maples vomited after seeing the ad.

If you’re like me, I would think the making of this ad would make a wonderful Netflix series about Trump and Ivana fighting over the last piece of stuffed crust pizza in 1995.

Last call: The Drink Cart No Face

In light of all this AI anime imagery floating around the feeds, I felt a drink inspired by all that would be a good call. This one, inspired by a set of cocktails made for Chicago’s Michelin starred Yugen by Stella Miller seemed to fit the bill. The No Face is inspired by the mystery character in 2001’s Spirited Away.

It’s a bit of a remix of the Brooklyn cocktail but goes off the rails by adding some charcoal power to the whiskey. This is wilder than that time I got a bottle of celery bitters for a cocktail - but this is available on Amazon, if we’re still allowed to use that up here in Canada.

Here’s my take on the recipe inspired by Stella Miller:

• 2oz Rye mixed with a little bit of charcoal powder

• 3/4 oz Sherry

• 1/2 oz Curacao or Cointreau

• 1/4 oz simple syrup

• 3-4 dashes Angostura bitters

• Stir with ice, strain over a cube as big as you can get, garnish with a good Luxardo cherry.

As you toast this cocktail after a hard week in the prompt mines of ChatGPT, here’s a quote I stumbled across from Thomas Kemeny to contemplate.

“AI is creatively amazing if you give it the exact right prompt. But if you know the exact right prompt, you’ve already cracked the brief.”

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Drink Cart Approved™ agency discussion topics

• The people using the new ChatGPT image model to make the worst ads you can imagine (seriously beautiful ad and a BIC pen ad) and then calling it “Vibe Marketing.” Are we “cooked”? Or is it over? Or So over? Discuss.

• The mastery of copy in the AI is pretty stunning.

• That McBarge is sinking now.

• Thinking about the Kingdome and its amazing logo. (And that 25 years ago this week they imploded it.)

• Are we all in on protein condiments or just bullish on chicken cutlets?

• Can not stand golf, but this Coors Light neon is incredible.

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The Drink Cart is your weekly fuel for pop culture brains and ad junkies. A cocktail of ad insights and hot takes that feel like you’re hanging at your favourite dive bar after launching your latest campaign.