Year in Review: Chicken Licken commercial features Durban's latest rising star!
And it's probably not who you think it is...
Not all commercials are created equally.
Most of the time, you just want to get back to the film, series or show you had been watching and you dream of skipping through the almost unlimited amount of advertisements (most of which you have seen so many times you can recite them word for word).
But every now and again one brand just gets it right and this year Chicken Licken hit the nail on the head with their ad campaign.
If you still haven't seen it yet, we'll tell you a little bit about it.
Chicken Licken took a classic 80's television show, 'Knight Rider', and put a South African twist on it. It even features David Hasselhof!
You can watch the first ad here and the second one, where the Hoff tries to speak Zulu, here.
The ads also feature a replica of KITT, the talking car who some argue was the real star of the iconic show.
And just when you thought it couldn't get any cooler - as it turns out, this new KITT was made right here in Durban.
Anban Pillay has been a car fanatic since he can remember and like many petrolheads, there's always that one car that sparks passion and interest. For Anban, it was an all-black Pontiac Trans-Am that was featured in the show 'Knight Rider' and was named KITT, that lit the fuse.
Anban is an electrical engineer and has been able to use his knowledge and skills to not only assemble one KITT replica, but has managed to create two!
It was after his daughter's matric dance, where she had arrived in this car, that he had come to the realisation that building an exact model wasn't going to be easy, but it wasn't as impossible as he had believed.
His first attempt at recreating the classic Knight Industries Two Thousand (KITT) Trans-Am wasn't quite right, as it wasn't the correct model. The cars used in the series were all built between the years 1982 and 1985, whereas the model he had acquired was a 1986 model.
So very close but still so far.
Anban spoke to the Citizen about the project that has taken him over four years to complete and even though it had a few minor differences, the car looked almost identical to the on-screen version.
Because of that it didn’t have some of the details of the earlier cars. It also started off life as white, no T-Tops and was a manual – although KITT is an auto.
Although a superfan might be able to nitpick a few details, it is incredibly impressive that Anbran was even able to include the famous red light scanner and KITT nose.
As mentioned as well, he is an electrical engineer, so he was able to craft a KITT voice generating system that responds to comments and commands and an entirely digital dashboard
After finishing the first KITT model, he heard the news of a 100% correct model on the market and he sold his first model, for a "ridiculously low price", in order to get cash fast.
While Anban was finalising the purchase of his new replica, the seller was contacted by an agency called Joe Public who were looking to use the car in an advertisement that would be based on 'Knight Rider'.
As it turns out, the ad campaign in question was the now already infamous Chicken Licken 'New Rider, New Slider' ads.
You can see the kitted out KITT in full action right here:
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Main image courtesy of Chicken Licken/YouTube