Snickers: "Do Something Manly"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zgvJ-dS_gM

Last year during, Super Bowl XLI, there was Snickers ad that featured two mechanics working on a car together. One of the mechanics pulls out a snickers bar and pts it in his mouth, while the other mechanic, who apparently either has a cocaine like addiction to snickers bars and couldn’t resist the sight of one, or skipped breakfast and was really hungry, starts to devour the other end of the candy bar. This leads to a homage of the famous Disney movie Lady and the tramp in which the two men accidentally kiss. Realizing the horrible, homoerotic mistake they just made, one of them declares that they must “do something manly” in order t atone to this great sin against the man code.

Now there are four versions of this commercial, three of the four end with them inflicting injury upon themselves or each other, ranging from striking each other with a large pipe wrench, drinking motor oil and windshield washer, or in the case of my example, tearing out their chest hair. The fourth version features a third mechanic showing up and asking the other two if there is "Room for three in this Love Boat."

While certainly hilarious, these commercials created a lot of controversy from gay and lesbian groups, with complaints lodged against Masterfoods (a division of Mars, the makers of Snickers,) that the ads were homophobic. Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese citing; "This type of jeering from professional sports figures at the sight of two men kissing fuels the kind of anti-gay bullying that haunts countless gay and lesbian school children on playgrounds all across the country." Masterfoods has since pulled the ads and the website and Youtube is essentially the only place left to watch them.

I remember watching these ads during the Superbowl and thinking that this wouldn’t end well for Mars. While the ads got a good laugh out of me, I can certainly see why many people were offended by them. The homophobic nature of these ads might just isn’t something that these companies can get away with given the current political environment. While these banned ads are certainly entertaining, they just aren’t right for the times.