Suicide Food

[tikistitch]

tiki was a weird kid. When we were a baby tiki, we used to worry about the Starkist ads, specifically, why loveable cartoon pitchman Charlie Tuna's greatest wish was apparently to be disemboweled and crammed inside a tin can so tuna lovers could enjoy chewing on his flanks. It seemed an advertising strategy bent to appeal to the Ed Gein's of this world (not that, at age 5, we possessed great knowledge about the proclivities of famous serial murderers) rather than sandwich lovers. But evidently, we were alone in the world, as this didn't seem to concern the many grownups involved in this long running campaign. We've seen the Frito Bandito slink off in shame, but Charlie Tuna, much to his own displeasure, lives on.

But, now, thanks to the Intarnets, we have found

Suicide Food

the blog run by a person who not only shares our uneasy fascination with self-immolating product spokesman, but has evidently made it a personal crusade to winnow out and spotlight every last suicidal pig and chicken with a death wish, strictly for our horror-tinged enjoyment!

Comments

[twotone]

Although I find self-destructive food spokespeople to be kind of creepy, I'm also deeply unsettled by depictions of sentient food that very clearly DO NOT want to be eaten, and the gleeful children devouring them. The Chips Ahoy commercials and Pop Tarts ads are particularly distressing for me, as the kids really come across as sociopathic cannibals. (Well, not cannibals, as such, but is there a term for people who like to eat sentient beings? What does Galactus count as?)

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

The Chips Ahoy commercials like the one in the car where they keep disappearing to a horrible, horrible fate? Haha, I'd forgotten about that one!!!

[twotone]

Yeah. The current one they're airing has a chocolate chip cookie gyrating in what appears to be the comfort of its apartment, singing "Do ya Think I'm Sexy?" before being devoured by some giant hand in the sky. So it's got the horrible death AND creepy sexualization, all in one.

The Pop Tarts commercials feature children who are only somewhat bigger than the anthropomorphized Poptarts, which just highlights the unsettling Lord of the Flies/Cannibal Demon Children aspect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2yzfps7nUo

[blythou.livejournal.com]

You sound a lot like Lilo with her zombie fascination ;-)

When I was a kid, there was this French commercial for mushrooms that actually danced and jumped into a frying pan. To this day, for my mother, people who don't know what's good for them or who voluntarily rush headlong into trouble are "mushrooms jumping into the pan".