Odds are, you probably remember Toyota’s Swagger Wagon commercials. It was one of those cringe ad campaigns that execs probably expected to be a hit but really just landed flat and never actually convinced anyone who was minivan-hesitant to take the plunge. People do occasionally still refer to minivans as swagger wagons, though, so maybe it had more of a cultural effect than we’d like to think. After shooting its first Swagger Wagon music video, did you know that Toyota went back and made a second one that prominently features Busta Rhymes?
And if you thought the original, which you can watch here if you happen to need a reminder, was cringe, you may still not be prepared for what you’re about to see. It’s so bad that not only did all of Jalopnik’s staff collectively manage to wipe its existence from our memory, but at the time, several outlets called it the worst commercial of all time. At some point, someone has to make the worst commercial ever made, but if we were betting, we probably wouldn’t have guessed it was Toyota.
In fact, we actually wrote about it back when it was first released, a fact only unearthed while trying to find more information on the video because, again, no one at Jalopnik remembered that Toyota ever released it. At the time, we said, “The whole thing is pretty awful to watch because it relies on a bunch of cliche ideas of what a rap song and video is supposed to be, just like the 2010 ‘swagger wagon’ video that played off a 16-year-old Gangsta Boo song.”
So yeah, we weren’t exactly thrilled with it back in 2014, and if anything, it’s only aged worse. Still, it exists, we’ve been reminded that it exists, and so now you have to be reminded that it exists. Sorry, we don’t make the rules.
Also, the mom definitely has a thing for Busta, right? I’m not just imagining that?