February 25, 2013
Am I the only one who notices how disturbing some innocuous commercials really are? Kids- children – the future of this nation – are being encouraged to commit all sorts of violent and depraved crimes by cute animated characters! And you thought G.I. Joe was violent! (Or if you thought I was a hack, you win!!!) Anyway, check this one out:
So a LIVING, SENTIENT Pop-Tart doing his best impression of Fonzie jumping the garbage cans at Arnolds, accidentally falls into the toaster and DIES. And it’s all yummy yummy fun. Subtext: THE POP TART DIED! HOORAY!! I mean jeeze, imagine if Fearless Fonzarelli’s stunt ended with him falling into a toaster instead of a fried chicken stand (and then Pinky Tuscadero turned it on)
If fact, if you watch these Pop-Tart commercials, you’ll see a theme- that they all basically end with nice, loveable living pastries who think and dream and feel either falling into, or getting tricked into the toaster, to their deaths. I mean look at this one:
This is flat out murder for god’s sake!
It’s not limited to mediocre breakfast treats either. Check this out:
The M&M doesn’t want to be eaten for goodness sake! And I’m sorry, but look at the last couple of scenes: She’s trying to shove the loveable M&M into an oven against his will. And then it’s a group of women eating him alive. This one gave me nightmares, NO JOKE.
This one is slightly better, as the murder/eating alive aspect is subtle and played for laughs (ha. ha.) And these pretzel M&Ms present a whole ethical dilemma unto themselves. The pretzel and the M&M are presumably living beings, (and of similar sizes) yet they are happily expected to have one crawl up inside the other one (where exactly? M&Ms aren’t usually depicted with a chocolate chute if you know what I mean) to be eaten. Who’s the demented candy Frankenstein (or maybe a confectionary Mengele) making this happen? It’s like demanding the ingredients of the turducken (if you don’t know consider yourself lucky) assemble themselves so fatsos like John Madden can eat them alive.
Now I like this one. This one is interesting. There’s nobody trying to eat/kill them, no message of “Hey kids! Eat me alive and suck out my blood with your breakfast milk!” but the silly frosted mini wheats think absolutely nothing of cavorting in front of boxes and boxes filled with what I presume to be mini wheat corpses. The new slogan for this product: “It’s a mini-wheat holocaust! Now with berries!”
Gary Larson was a prophet. Check out this classic far side cartoon and see what I mean….genius. Pure genius.
Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride 
I never thought about it before, but it is kind of sick to portray man made junk foods as sentient creatures.
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You’ve obviously never heard of the Shmoos in the comic strip ” L’il Abner “. They were designed to WANT to be eaten. MUCH better than ” Soylent Green “, & it would drive Vegans & PETA supporters nuts !!
Nice shout – out to Gary Larson. Lord, I miss that strip.
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I know of the strip and I know of the Shmoos but I really know nothing about them, and I think Keyes knows even less.
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They were little, bowling – pin shaped creatures who could become pretty much any food someone wanted, & they could almost be insulted if you DIDN’T eat them, IIRC. I think a vegan would not partake of shmoo tissue.
The Babylon 5 series had a creature called a Spoo which was eaten by almost every species in the B5 universe, & now I have to wonder if there’s a Shmoo / Spoo connection !!
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The only schmoos I know of are the ones that met Fred and Barney (the Bedrock Cops) and the two blobs that hung out with the Herculoids!
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PS- Gary Larson was amazing. Peanuts, Far Side, Bloom County and Calvin & Hobbes = Comic Strip HALL OF FAME
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Add Mutts and there’s my Top Five.
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Boondocks ?
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No.
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Pogo ?
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I know of it but haven’t read any of it.
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C’mon. It’s an American popular culture treasure.
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