Samsung/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

I'm not sure if you're aware, but Apple launched a couple of new, and rather larger, phones last week.

Oddly, it seemed that the company's sudden embrace of size was like a bald man's sudden embrace of a horse-haired toupee.

Samsung owners had, after all, enjoyed larger phones since the days when the iPhone was vertically challenged.

Yet Apple acted on Tuesday as if size had somehow been one of its latest brainwaves. It's clear Samsung was pushed beyond peevification at this chutzpah.

The Korea-based company immediately released ads mocking almost every element of Apple's show. The ads were a little coarse around the edges, not offering the same wit as some of the excellent mocking ads that had emerged from its US wing.

It was instructive that Samsung's US spokesperson released this terse statement about them: "The social videos were produced in Korea and are not part of the US marketing campaign."

Some might have translated that as: "Aaaggh. There they go undoing all our hard work. Bloody corporate headquarters!"

Now Samsung America is releasing its own mockery, with its first TV spot airing Sunday. The ad gives Apple a slightly more subtle coat of smear, and doesn't spare some members of the technology press either.

Samsung would like to remind so many alleged experts of what they originally thought of its Galaxy Note. The descriptions of it as "an unwieldy beast," for example. And the comparisons with toast.

"Now it's not being dismissed by competitors," says the voice-over. "It's being imitated."

Competitors? Of whom can Samsung possibly be thinking?

Still, the company doesn't want to dwell too long on Apple's mere imitation. This ad wants to explain that the Note 4 is more innovative and more adept at productivity.

But it somehow can't manage to do that for long. Samsung has to revert to obervers' tweets, such as "Is it me or does the new iPhone 6 look like the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (from 2012) -- minus the stylus?" (And let's not forget the similarity to Google's Nexus 4, of course.)

And so real people are left to decide. Do they vote with their heart or their head? Or do they bury both in the sand?

The next few months will show what ordinary humans believe is really the next big thing.