Coco Pops and hot milk

Tuesday 09 December 2008 at 09:48 am

Exhibit A: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ltd8aUEXFK8
I keep ranting about this - people just look at me in a "you're a bit mental, aren't you?" kind of a way. But surely someone must appreciate how bloody ridiculous this advert really is.

If you don't know, the setup is this; child waiting for breakfast, mum pours hot milk onto child's Coco Pops. Camera then zooms into the bowl, to reveal, at the bottom of the bowl, three animated female* hippos doing some sort of synchronised swimming dance to "Sign Your Name" by Terence Trent D'Arby off of the 1990s. As the camera pulls out again, voice-over says something along the lines of "you never know what's going on in the bowl".

This concept is clearly from the diseased imaginings of a copywriter on the edge. Was there an ideas meeting, when this idea was brought up? What were they thinking? I've seen wildlife documentaries, and that tail-wagging poo-spreading thing hippos do to mark their territories. And when the child gets to the bottom, will their greedy spoon seek out the poor unfortunate creatures - to bite their little hippo heads off in the name of fun? Or wail to the unsuspecting parent, "Mum! Mum! There's three tiny animals dancing and crapping in my breakfast, make it go away!"

Should the strapline be: "Coco Pops - so full of hippo shit it turns the milk brown"?

*They have bows on their heads. That's how you can tell.