Ryan Reynolds and Tom Kuntz Team Up for Hilariously Bleak 'Toon Blast' Ads

Let’s be honest, most ads for mobile games suck. 

There are exceptions. Barton F. Graf’s work for Supercell has been solid over the years, including the famous Liam Neeson Super Bowl ad for Clash of Clans. But the sector too often shoehorns in celebrities without much of a creative idea. 

Peak Games bucks that trend, though, with a fun campaign for mobile game Toon Blast—by hiring the best in the comedy business, actor Ryan Reynolds and MJZ director Tom Kuntz, to bring some 30 spots to life online via TBWAChiatDay Los Angeles. 

The campaign leans heavily into absurdist humor—Kuntz’s specialty—beginning with a spot simply called “PSA,” in which the Deadpool actor describes a “problem” he’s been battling since arriving in Hollywood. 

“PSA” introduces what turns out to be a major theme of the campaign—the addictive nature of Toon Blast. His addiction makes Reynolds an oblivious, useless, even slightly malevolent figure throughout the ensuing spots, including a bunch of executions in which he’s a total prima donna on the set of some movie he’s making. 

Our favorite spot is probably “Arms,” in which he appears to have hired a puppeteer to give him fake arms, so he can pretend he’s not actually playing Toon Blast 24/7. 

A couple of other spots introduce Reynold’s body double for the movie—a guy who seems like a very poor choice indeed. 

There are also a few spots in which Reynolds screws up during the actual filming of this fictitious movie. 

Below are a few other amusing one-off set pieces (“Girl” and “Tattoo”) as well as a pair of spots build around silly but comical sight gags (“Clock” and “Tiny Hands”). 

Peak Games plans to precisely target each spot to specific audiences online, in different cuts, in what it’s characterizing as a more creative, celebrity-driven version of performance marketing. 

“Within the first 24 hours of each campaign launch, Peak Games has the power to precisely measure the amount of impact, iterate the commercial selections to the audiences’ taste and the campaign will evolve naturally to find the right match between creative and audience,” the company said. 

“The team over at Peak Games was fun and easy to work with, and I really enjoyed the experience,” Reynolds said in a statement.

“Ryan Reynolds is a perfect fit for Toon Blast because of his brand, celebrity and his signature humor, which was the perfect way to make Toon Blast relatable,” added Ömer İnönü, director of strategy at Peak Games. “We’re lucky to be the first mobile gaming company to have an acclaimed professional like Reynolds act in our performance marketing campaign.”

Kuntz is advertising’s preeminent absurdist director, having crafted any number of famous comedy campaigns, from Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” to DirecTV’s “Cable Effects.”