"It's my knees. They don't work the way they used to."
The Health Hotline knee brace commercial was created in 2015. In the commercial, Ellie asks her grandma if they can go outside and play. Grandma wants to play with Ellie, but her bad knees make it difficult for her to stand on her own. When Grandma gets a knee brace, she skateboards so fast that Ellie can't keep up with her. The commercial is known for its cheap and bizarre animation.
Another version with African-American characters aired on stations that were popular with minorities. The two commercials are no longer being shown on TV, but the original version and the alternate version can still be watched here
and here respectively.
"Trope me if you can, kiddo!":
- Alliterative Title: Health Hotline.
- Clip-Art Animation: Ellie and her grandma are clip-art images with added animated mouths.
- Feeling Their Age: Grandma tells Ellie that she wants to play, but her knees have gotten much worse with age.
- Instant Expert: Grandma can't even stand at the beginning of the the commercial. Just minutes after Grandma gets a knee brace and begins to stand again, she already knows how to skateboard, and she's good enough to out-speed Ellie.
- Limited Animation: The commercials have really limited animation. They just use Clip-Art Animation with animated mouths.
- Older Is Better: Grandma is much older than Ellie, but she's much faster.
- Open-Door Opening: The first thing we hear is Ellie opening the door to talk to Grandma.
- Race Lift: There's another version of the commercial where Ellie and her grandma are African-Americans. They have the same voices, so they aren't really different characters.
- Repeating Ad: These ads are seen frequently on digital subchannels like COZI TV and Buzzr. Sometimes, it airs on major cable networks too, like when TNT aired one of the ads during a Star Wars marathon. Sometimes, both variants of the ad would play on two different ad breaks, like it did on one COZI airing of the VeggieTales episode "Lyle, The Kindly Viking".
- Stock Footage: The commercial uses some stock footage of people talking on the phone.
- White Void Room: A plain white background is used for Grandma's house. The outdoors have a bit more detail, but a white background is still used.
- You Don't Look Like You: In the original version, when Grandma's outside her model switches to an old lady who barely even looks like her. The second model is much thinner, and the face is completely different. The African-American version is much better about this; the second model is still thinner, but they reuse the head of the first one so it still seems like the same person.
