Today we're reminded that the singing Quiznos rats were real and not a collective fever dream

There you are. It’s 2003. You’re chilling on your parent’s couch, flipping channels because you don’t have the luxury of Netflix or Hulu. You settle on a show, hunker down, and, all of a sudden, you’re confronted with the creepiest creatures you’ve ever seen, singing and playing guitar in front of a Quiznos. “This cannot be an ad,” you think. “I am dreaming.” You maintained that illusion for years, but nothing stays buried in the online age. Yes, the Quiznos rats are back.

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Thanks to Twitter, these things—which were Spongmonkeys, not rats, though they look like sleep paralysis demons had a baby with the “Hamster Dance” hamsters—have resurfaced, with one Twitter user opining that “millennials don’t own homes because this quiznos commercial put a hex on us as children.” They’re right. You should feel a little hexed. Everything is worse since we first encountered these monsters.

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