Monday, August 25, 2008

Sex sells — and thankfully, someone is thirsty!

I won't try to deny it — sex and food mix quite well. Now, get your minds out of the gutter — I'm talking sex appeal, not merely sex. And let's be honest — sex sells.

(If you don't believe me that the libido can lure buyers, just check out any of the recent Axe deodorant "Bom Chicka Wah Wah" ads, the now-infamous then-controversial suggestive (in the most orally of ways) Puma ads, or just walk past an Abercrombie and Fitch, plug you nose, and peek in.)

Yet sex has been selling everything from vacuum cleaners

to cars

to condos

and even to toilet paper.


But the line between sex and food might have just been erased — at least in the mind of anyone old enough to know what sexual intentions are – in the latest U.K. commercial for Orangina, a orangey carbonated drink I enjoyed several times during class parties in high school French.

With an aggressive (and, so it appears, aggressively horny) bear, clips of female animals being drenched in orange liquid, and a scene showing Orangina bottles exploding between the legs of zebras, I can't recall a time when food has ever been so sexually charged. This beats, by far, the ad for an Italian pasta maker once thought to be a bit too erotic:


While sex will always sell even the strangest of products, what's your take on the video below? Has sex appeal gone too far when companies are using graphically animated animals to push us to, seemingly, "Be sexy, drink Orangina!" with commercials?



Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the drink. I'm also not incredibly concerned with sex selling foods. Or the link between sex and food (I mean, I loved the photo shoot Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi and some babyback ribs did for GQ.)

So for now, sex up the carbonated drink commercials all you want. But the day I see my favorite vendor at the farmers' market in a bikini "bom chicka wah wah"-ing some produce, I'm going to have to put my foot down.

Oh, and I won't even start on the extreme and overt raciness of every Dolce & Gabbana ad ever published (or banned). You can Google Image that one yourselves.

—Brian S

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