Classic Mentos Commercial

Melissa Crow
10/16/2008
Classic Mentos Commercial


In this commercial, a woman steps out of a vehicle as she is dropped off at an important, classy event. As she gets out of the car, her dress shoe rips right through the end of her fancy evening gown. One woman who is already at the event, sees the embarrassing moment and probably thinks to herself, “sucks to be her”. After a short, disappointing pause, the woman whose dress ripped decides to confidently pop a mentos in her mouth and proceeds to tear the end of her dress off. The other woman watching has a look on her face like “what are you doing lady?”, “are you seriously ripping your dress right here in front of everyone?” The dress lady turns her ripped, embarrassing moment into a “no problem” situation.
Her dress is now a short dress with a shawl, and she walks away smiling. As she confidently walks up to the event, she passes the other woman who had seen it all. The lady gives her a smile with a gesture that says,”Smooth move”. The dress lady smiles back with a gesture of,”I know” and shows her roll of mentos.
The whole time the classic mentos jingle is playing in the background and it seems to narrate what isn't being said throughout the commercial, within the song itself. It goes, "It doesn't matter what comes, fresh goes better in life, with mentos fresh and full of life, nothing gets to you, stayin' fresh stayin' cool, with mentos fresh and full of life...".
The villain in this advertisement isn’t really a person, but rather the situation of the dress tearing at the important event is, which can cause a lot of problems for any woman, but not this woman. She remains cool and shows that this situation is not going to keep her from going to the event.
The idea of the story is what a cool and risky person and oh look, she even has her mentos. I guess the hero would be herself, because she saves herself with her cool and calm personality and maybe with the mentos as her sidekick.
I feel the social values or characters that are supposed to be pitted against each other through conflict are not completely obvious in this commercial as some others are today. Although, it makes you wonder what the other woman is thinking as she watches the ladies dress rip and waits for her reaction. She could be representing the social value of the normal reaction of women to something like this. The woman whose dress ripped fights against the normal reaction as well, by surprising us when she rips her dress and walkss away confidently instead of becoming a dramatic, upset victim. It was a short moment of possible rivalry in social values or characters if the situation didn’t come under control as quickly as it did.
For a moment, it was as if both women were silenced by the embarrassment of the dress ripping. One was experiencing it and one was watching it all go down. You know how sometimes when you see something happen to someone else it’s almost embarrassing for you as well, but at the same time the naughtiness inside you say “ha ha” for a second. For example, if I happen to see my husband fall doen the steps and its embarassing to him then its embarassing to me, but at the same time I just want to laugh. The woman watching almost had a chance to spoil the night by giving a gesture or deviant giggle, but there was no chance with this cool lady who by the way, also has fresh breath. The silly fact that she even has time to think of grabbing a mentos while her dress has just ripped in front of everyone shows two things. One is how the situation really hasn’t frazzled her and two is that her mentos are frequently important to her.
Some of the social values in this short commercial are the fancy, important event happening, the high class dress everyone is in and the personality of the woman whose dress ripped. These are the kind of people who enjoy mentos.