Snacks are great. Scrotums are great. Combining the two is a painful mistake we can’t imagine anyone making more than once. Sadly we don’t need to imagine it, as companies keep catching our collective crotches in the zipper of advertising: it’s it’s meant to bring us and the product together, but all it does is make us wince.
Advertising executives insist that some snacks are actively manly, so we decided to investigate. Each snack will be judged on the stereotypically manly property they’re aiming for, the one the ad actually delivers, and then I’ll eat to see what happens.
Yorkie Buttons
Manliness Aim: Male Bonding
Yorkie’s “It’s not for girls!” campaign is what happens when “Feminists stole my ice cream” gets an advertising budget.
(Source: Yorkie)
Enjoying chocolate is stereotypically feminine, and instead of accepting that stereotypes are stupid and chocolate is delicious—-two of the easiest conclusions any child could arrive at—-Yorkie decided they had to steal chocolate from women. Because men can’t have anything that’s been used by women because there might be cooties or menses all over it. We’d better hope no one tells the Yorkie dudes that women use toilet paper, or their work will get even $#!+tier.
It was bad enough while they were wrapping their lips around chocolate bars, but they upped the anti-aunty-ante by applying the same campaign to the bag of “MAN SIZE” chocolate buttons.
(Source: Yorkie)
If a big thick stick of chocolate is manly, buttons must be even manlier. Presumably they’re buttons for our military uniforms in the war of the sexes. Either that or they launch our immensely phallic missiles.
Manliness Achieved: Being Ignored by Women
Yorkie’s entire campaign was based on the bet that women would sigh, ignore the guys” stupid bull$#!+, and buy the chocolate anyway. Which embodies the advertiser’s entire experience with women: “stupid stereotypes” and “being absolutely ignored by the entire opposite gender.” These advertisers paid to tell the entire country how bad this company was at gender relations. It’s as if Willy Wonka used golden tickets to inform his neighbors that he was a sex offender.
Manliness Experiment: Moving Beyond Gender
When you buy a big bag of chocolate buttons you claim you’re going to share it, or only eat a few, but like most advertising this is hypocrisy and lies. Once you start eating you don’t want anyone else to come anywhere near you until you’ve finished. So the “repel people” aspect of the ads is pretty on-message.
McCoy Crisps
(Source: McCoys)
Manliness Aim: Toughness
The phrase “MAN Crisps” only suggests unwashed underwear, and while a sweating scrotum also has lots of folds and ridges filling up with crunchy flavor it’s not exactly appetizing. Since humanity invented showers they haven’t been much of a problem.
Manliness Result: Sulking down the pub
The McCoys website opened the bag of MAN crisps like a MANdora’s box to unleash an awful imaginary world of MANliness. This world was a mythical pub, a bastion of blokishness where guys could ogle girls and share tips on how not to cry while watching TV.
Even the model they paid to be here looks bored. (Source: McCoys)
Soap bubble manliness which can be popped by the surface tension of its own tears. (Source: McCoys)
I don’t know if McCoys know that women are allowed in pubs now. But based on how dated this campaign is I don’t think McCoys even know that there’s been a queen instead of a king for a while now.
Manliness Experiment: Cunning Plan
I’ll be honest: they’re pretty good crisps. I’m just not sure where they anti-female aspect comes in. Most men and women have about the same strength of facial muscles. I don’t think these fried blades of potato will burst through the sides of female faces, Joker-style. The only is some kind of high-level share price scam, where McCoys wanted to temporarily cut their sales by fifty percent.
Club Orange
Manliness Aim: Mating
(Source: Club Orange)
The “Ultimate Wingman” campaign embodies the most obsolete ideas in mating since bringing your date the pelt of a saber-tooth tiger. It makes Don Draper look like the Queen of Feminism.
The advertiser’s life, but without the woman or the jacuzzi. Still naked and crying at home though. (Source: Club Orange)
Manliness Result: Violence
The Ultimate Wingman successfully harnesses primal urges by having the most punchable face in existence.
PLEASE DO NOT SMASH MONITOR (Source: Club Orange)
He looks and acts like he’s a secret military project to create the world’s most detestable jerk, intended to decoy entire armies out of position with the overwhelming urge to kick his ass. He’d be a brilliant mascot for a punching bag manufacturer.
Manliness Experiment: Nope
I don’t know how long orange soda has been gendered, but I hope it was long after I stopped drinking it. When someone’s serving me liters of orange fluid I don’t want them to be bragging about how much penis was involved. You don’t tell everyone that everything about the world’s most detestable dick is bright orange and then hand me a bottle of exactly that color of liquid. With little bits in it. It’s convinced me never to drink this fluid again, making it the worst advertisement of all time.
Luke McKinney writes about games, drink, science, and everything else that makes life amazing. He’s a columnist on Cracked and writes for several beer magazines. He’s also available for hire. Follow him on Tumblr and Twitter @lukemckinney.
Luke’s tackled idiotic “manly” ads before in The five Maddest Men in Manvertising.
And that’s coming from a site called Man Cave.
