There’s a lot of advertising aimed at kids these days. You may remember it from your childhood or if you are a child well… you… probably shouldn’t be reading this. There’s sweary words. Well, not yet but there will be. Bitchtits. See? I warned you! Now go to bed. Anyway, yes. You’ll probably remember a lot of this over-zealous advertising but if you don’t, here’s a Family Guy reminder.
Of course, it was only a matter of time before some cynical bastards (ie advertising executives) got hold of some little tykes for an advert aimed at adults. Naturally, this has happened before but never on a level which is quite this sickeningly awful. As usual with Fadvertising, it all looks fairly innocuous but let’s take a look at what the Morrison’s Kids advert is really trying to say.
Let’s start with the bloody Balamory bus that they ride in on. I know it’s not even close to being the focus of the shot, presumably left out in favour of Nick Hancock’s Sunday dinner clucking in the foreground but it’s clearly a nice little country school. Apparently a nice country school with three kids at it. This is David Cameron’s Big Society prophesised by a major grocer. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Oh wait! Hang on! There’s millions of them! There’s bound to be more than would actually fit on that little bus. Unless these children are part of the farming community. In that sense, I mean that they’re about to be taken out to slaughter and sold at the deli counter of a local supermarket.
Your friendly local butcher; selling kids to kids!
That’s a pretty disturbing image but I’m quite sure that there’s literally no other explanation other than that children are being killed and sold as veal. Joke. Honestly. Put the phone down. The lawyers don’t care. Of course, on their little trip down t’farm the kids get to meet the jolly ol’ farmer and… some fud from Morrisons? What’s he doing there? Where’s the teacher?! Have these children really been allowed to be taken on a school trip by the official representative of a major supermarket?
This is what I find really objectionable about this ad. Sure, it’s not as awful as seeing Richard “The Hamster” Hammond pushing a trolley across the English countryside when he could just as easily have picked one up OUTSIDE THE SHOP but it does prey on a different part of the psyche. Nostalgia.
We all remember primary school trips to museums, farms, whatever random attraction happened to be in or near your town but I really don’t remember there being a Sales Assistant from a supermarket there to interpret the words of my father like a cross between Joseph and Freud. I shudder to think what that would look like. So your precious childhood memories are now being warped into something which Morrisons are using to say “HEY! HEY, ADULTS! WE USE BRITISH THINGS! NO VARIANT CJD HERE! HONEST!”
Forgotten your childhood yet?!
Trust me when I tell you that this will open the floodgates and soon children will be being ‘educated’ by FTSE 250 companies instead of by schools. Their educational programming will have a magic floating pen with a light on which is incapable of spelling anything other than “Waitrose”. The end is nigh, my friends. The supermarkets will be buying you soon. Hide the children! Hide them!
