My Brand

About

My Brand is a series of parody videos inspired by a commercial for the contact lens retail company 1-800 CONTACTS in which a man yells the phrase out of joy after receiving his preferred brand of prescription eye wear.

Origin

A copy of the original 1-800 CONTACTS commercial was uploaded by YouTuber TheWaffle816 on June 6th, 2012. Months later, YouTuber MegaGFilms uploaded a video titled “My Brand!” (shown below, left) on September 28th, which featured a Source Filmmaker reenactment of the commercial with the characters Tali and Commander Shepherd from the sci-fi video game series Mass Effect. Within four months, the parody accumulated over 4.1 million views and 8,500 comments.

Spread

On the following day, MegaGFilms' YouTube clip was submitted to the /r/gaming^[1] and /r/videos^[2] subreddits, both receiving more than 6,000 up votes and 200 comments within the next three months. On October 1st, Redditor Qbertoh submitted a post titled “When I’m trying to find my brand of contact lenses” to the /r/reactiongifs subreddit,^[3]which featured an animated GIF of Commander Shepherd with the caption “I have special eyes” (shown below). Within three months, the post received over 660 up votes and 10 comments.

On November 11th, YouTuber mcr00sterDOTA uploaded a parody video using footage from the online strategy game League of Legends (shown below, left), accumulating more than 83,000 views and 300 comments within the next two months. On November 14th, YouTuber iAmxKoreaNxAlt uploaded a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic parody of the commercial, in which Twilight Sparkle reacts to Pinkie Pie delivering a shipment of contact lenses (shown below, right). Within two months, the video received over 135,000 up votes and 1,000 comments.

On November 17th, Redditor AcerRubrum submitted a post to the /r/MyLittlePony^[4] subreddit, featuring an image macro of a frightened-looking Pinkie Pie with the caption "My brand!" (shown below, left). Over the next two months, the post garnered over 2,100 up votes and 75 comments. On December 4th, Tumblr user erindipitea highlighted an image macro featuring Sauron's eye from the fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings gazing upon a 1-800 CONTACTS box with the caption "Look, look with your special eye… / My brand! (shown below, right), receiving upwards of 10,000 notes over the next six weeks.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References