commercial rage: Dr. Pepper just for men

I was wondering if I wanted to write an angry post about a commercial campaign that's 4 months old, but then I saw Conan O' Brian do a sponsored skit (not a skit mocking the commercial mind you, but a skit paid for by Dr. Pepper), and I said, "OH HELL YES I WANT TO WRITE AN ANGRY BLOG POST!"

So here we go. 

With this one, I just did pen with no pencil baseline. 

"Catchphrase!"

Go ahead and watch the commercial if you haven't seen it already. I'll wait.

Ok, you watched it? Good. Now, I will give you a shiny new dollar if you can tell me whether they are making fun of themselves or being completely straight about it, because I cannot, for the life of me, figure it the hell out.

I can kind of understand their rationale. "The Old Spice and Axe ads are pretty funny. People like those. So, hey, let's make a soda just for men." NO, IT IS NOT JUST FOR MEN, IT IS A UNISEX BEVERAGE, YOU IDIOT. You know, they have a Facebook page that is only for men? They coded the page to check gender and explicitly exclude women. Who does that? What company in their right mind would exclude a consumer base from their product (y'know, other than snooty, rich people)? That's insane.

I would expect something like this from the 90's, but not in this day and age. When people are just now realizing that women have money and are a force to be reckoned with, you want to poke fun at them? "Are you enjoying the action movie? Of couse not! You don't like action! You're a woman! With girly parts! Now get back in the kitchen and get me a MANLY DR. P!" Speaking as someone who's fairly deep into the geek culture and can safely see how many girls and women like action movies, books, comics, TV and videogames, I can tell you this is flat-out insulting.

"Catchphrase!"

Y'know what that says? That says, "yes, these movies are STUPID, and guys are dumb for liking them, and we made a drink for their dumb heads." So thanks for that, Dr. Pepper. You managed to insult BOTH genders.

I'm just now deciding to voice an opinion on this because, when I watch Conan, their commercials are on every other break. Then they do a sponsored skit, which is funny, but when they brought up Dr. Pepper, I was so hoping they were going to rip into the ad instead of bending over and taking it. It's a huge letdown. I hope the money they stuffed down his pants was at least good enough to fund some more skits.

Of course, being only a guy, I don't have the right to say how or what women should be appalled at. Maybe I'm overreacting. Would any ladies care to weigh in as to how they see the ad?