“Nonexistent problem, ineffective solution.”

This was the sage advice legendary writer Jim Downey would give to young writers like David Mandel when they were working on commercial parodies for Saturday Night Live. “That was often the key to a great commercial parody,” says Mandel, who wrote on the show from 1992 to 1995. “I loved making the commercial parodies. The chance to go off and make a little film was the opposite of SNL. You could edit it and be precise with it. It was exciting.”

Mandel got to write a number of commercial parodies during his three-year run on SNL, but his four favorites are below.

That’s Not Yogurt

The premise was simple: It was a guy eating yogurt, and the announcer keeps telling him, “That’s not yogurt,” but he won’t tell him what it is so the person gets very paranoid. It was my pitch, but Downey...