Sorry, I think the corn in those ads are better than the crying baby:

However, the spots look like they target people who don't know the PS3 or 360 exist, and think in terms of "upgrade".

That kid needs to go viral ASAP!  PLEASE DO IT SOMEONE!

Good grief I'd forgotten how atrocious that ad was. Suddenly even the Wii U's advertising doesn't look so bad.

People forget that.  Corn is better than that stuff.  REALLY BAD emotional response generated with the baby.  

Anyhow, thinking of it more, if you REALLY want to get to families, use the Simpsons and have Homer want to watch his TV shows, while Bart and Lisa want to play.  Show a fight break out and say... "Do you want to prevent getting into a fight with your kids over the TV?  Get a Wii U, and kick them off, and don't miss anything you want to watch now!  Now everyone can stay in the same room, and not have to talk to each other, and call it 'bonding'  More family building through less communications.  The Wii U does it all!"

It would be a take on what they showed at E3 to introduce the Wii U to the world, with the dad wanting to watch his baseball game NOW, and the kids playing Mario.

The car ads I showed because they do the same thing but much better. Neither the Wii U ad or the car ads are actually trying to sell you on the pros of their product. Instead they are trying to associate something good with the product. In Nintendo's case they have a scripted looking family "having fun" with the Wii U. They are basically trying to sell it to consumers by selling "a good family time" to the consumers. With the car ads they are doing the exact same thing yet in a much, much better way. The first one sells "children magic" and in the second one they are selling "a happy time."

I think NOA has made a concious decision to focus more on the kids market specifically, perhaps because of sales data from the latter half of the Wii/DS generations in North America that probably skewed more towards kids/family.

Europe got Penelope Cruz, but North America got these ads for NSMB2 and U:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMuLzRxrNYI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBlBe06Xm0c

Prominently centered around kids. Luigi's Mansion 2 spot stars a kid. Most of the Wii U commercials center around kids first too, whereas "Wii Would Like to Play" was probably a little more geared to adults.

I also think this is why the US/Canada gets the more "kid appealing" red/blue 3DS XL's but the white XL is a no go.

Also the bulk of Nintendo's TV marketing in the US seems to center of kids channels like Cartoon Network. I've never seen a Wii U ad during prime time in the US or Canada.

I have never seen a WiiU add, but then I don't watch cable TV, streaming commercial free services for me.

I think the adds are fine. Parents buy a hell of a lot of consoles, so it is a smart decision. They need WiiFit U and WiiU Sports resort to hit the parents directly.

Do TV adds for consoles even work for the Teens and Twenty somethings? How many still watch cable vs online services?

I prefer the Japanese TV commercials. They're relaxing to watch and feel so much more genuine. Here's a few:

WiiU has its own Nintendo 64 kid...the WiiU kid...Yes, it could have been a better ad...

How are they going to sell a product by making it look lame?

If you want kids to get your product, you should make it appealing to them so that they nag their parents for it. I don't think targeting it to the parents themselves is such a good idea, it makes it automatically "uncool" and kids are not gonna want it anyway.