Child's Play

I've just seen quite an odd commercial break. They've shown three adverts in a row in which the main theme appears to be Parents Lying to Their Children.

First, we get a Green Giant sweetcorn advert. A mother is happily telling her two children that eating runner beans will make you become a runner and French Fries would make you become French. Firstly, this is ridiculous. This is Britain; we do not call chips French Fries. But still, the two moronic children happily guzzle down their sweetcorn in the hope of becoming emerald-shaded men of titanic proportions.

Our second advert is all about some sort of paper towel. In it, a father happily tells his ugly son that the way paper towels work is because it's cram packed with tiny, tiny elephants. Of course. Luckily, his snot-nosed child doesn't seem to believe him. Mainly because the child is about twelve and wouldn't believe tiny elephants would live in tissue paper. Thing is, the advert doesn't say that the elephant story isn't true. I think I'll sue on the count that my kitchen towel doesn't contain a tiny race of Elephantidae.

Finally, we get the most annoying cereal advert in the world. Even more annoying than that Frosties advert with the hyperactive child. It's the Rice Krispies advert where a mother tells her annoying daughter that rice doesn't snap, crackle nor pop because it hasn't turned into Krispy Rice by Kellogg's. They then try and look out for the three mythical characters by listening to a bowl of the famed cereal. They decide on which odd noise the cereal makes is determined to which character; Snap, Crackle or Pop.

My favourite bit of that advert is when the little girl chekily answers back "No mum, I think that's Snap". If she was my daughter, I'd tell her to shut up. Advertising clearly lacks responsible parentage nowadays.