May 19, 2008

Smarties' condom terrorists

You can tell that the economy’s drying up when brands start to play the nostalgia card. The Starburst name is making way for Opal Fruits, and Snickers (always a shitty name that sounded a bit like the word Americans use for sports shoes, in one fell swoop subliminally linking the chocolate bar with the taste of rubber) reverting to Marathon.
So a big boo to Smarties, for reintroducing the blue sweet a mere two years after its rejection for health reasons, and forgetting that the real selling point of the brand was its sturdy round tube, abandoned for the hexagonal tube three years ago. My research is quite limited: the two youngest chimplets liked the old version and now prefer M&Ms. My patented infallible Chimpmetrics weighting measure translates this to represent 67% of UK 6-10 year-old children, which is damning evidence.


In the interests of research, I dispatched a brace of scantily clad monkeygirls to Widnes to find a typical ad numpty, and ask her opinion:
"What a delightful horror story. You know, this reminds me of something that happened in the park last week. There we were, Ethel and I, sitting on a bench when a man ran up and flashed us! Deary deary me! Ethel had a stroke, but I couldn’t reach. Why are those people dressed like condoms? Why are they running away? This looks like the old woman who lived in a shoe. Wait a minute. That blue chap has a rucksack. He’s heading for the tube! Is he a suicide bomber? Are you allowed to do that nowadays? I found a penny yesterday."

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