To think the Malteaser advert is in really poor taste

[Bearbehind]

Just seen a Malteaser advert where a woman in a wheelchair is talking to 2 friend in the park about her date.

The jist is she had a spasm, he enjoyed the repercussions, and whilst demonstrating her hand actions the malteasers shoot out of the bag and go every where.

Is it me or is that really bad taste?

If some of you honestly think there's a double meaning to that advert and then I'm out- goodnight

worra

I'll have you know my DS has never seen me wanking! I don't have a penis, to start with...

Oh, come on!

How am I being patronizing? Plenty of people have explained - in pretty simple terms - why they found the double meaning funny.

You are the one who was keen to get all academic about it, which was ridiculous in the context of a TV ad.

And no, you still don't seem to understand what the term means.

The advert constructs a scene where the obvious meaning is that the woman spills her sweets because she is disabled.

This would be a normal scene of the perils of disability: 'oh, poor disabled lady, she needs help'.

But that scene is subverted, and made funny, because she deliberately spills the sweets to illustrate a sexual innuendo - showing sexuality that people with disabilities are often not acknowledged to have by a bigoted world.

When she spills her sweets, this meaning coexists with the sexual innuendo you see, and that creates the duality of meaning.

I think it's a very clever ad.

It's interesting that the earlier responses on this thread assumed the OP thought the ad was in bad taste because it features someone with a disability and using that to comic effect.

OP if it's purely the sexual reference you find in poor taste then I kind of think I'm a prude too then! There's just too much reliance on sexual references for ads - yes I know it's nothing new but still.

Jess since when have we needed a penis to have wank?

OP... If some of you honestly think there's a double meaning to that advert and then I'm out- goodnight

Try showing the advert to a young innocent child and asking them what they think is happening.

And then get back to us...

It's interesting that the earlier responses on this thread assumed the OP thought the ad was in bad taste because it features someone with a disability and using that to comic effect.

Not really.

Given the fact in her second post the OP said... I don't see the connection between normalising disability and advertising chocolate

If it wasn't a double entendre then she'd have a cock in her hand.

It's a darn sight better than the awful blow-job ads for Flake. Surely you'd rather see this one. It's on right now. I quite enjoy the way it shows that we disabled lot are very similar to everyone else.

I have completely missed the ejaculating chocolate reference. I must be getting old....

I agree with LRD.

And Worra made an excellent point about the late Audrey Hepburn being used to sell chocolate. I find that distasteful tbh.

I usually have a frig , Worra. Or 'rub one out'. Dunno how you'd illustrate that with Maltesers, though...

Well that could be their next project Jess.

some people need to geta life-if u dont like it turn it off

everyone i spoke to on twitter when they first aired thought it was hilarious-they were all disabled

helena. Anal beads? But they'd melt, surely....

Worra I was a bit confused by that actually, I wonder if the OP did mean to start out talking about the disability side being in poor taste (I don't think it is) but then that's changed to focus on the sexual reference.

OP please clarify! 😀

I think the advert's awful too, because I think it's asking us to treat disabled sex as a freak show. I think it would be much more "normalising" (if that's what they're about) to have the exact tone of the previous adverts, but with the woman happening to be disabled.

Awkward sex moments happen to everybody, but it is never (at least never has been) the butt of a joke in an advert. Yes, of course disabled people have sex, but why do these spasms have to be the defining feature? Why does the "disabledsness" of the sex they have need to be foregrounded?

I'm not saying this is about the spasms, I'm saying it's a double standard. Sometimes during sex, able-bodied women's vaginas make farty noises. Sometimes they wet themselves. Would there ever be an advert about these elements of sex? For chocolate? No, but it's fair game because OMG-disabled.

Sure, I'd tell my mates about embarrassing sex noises in a beer garden as I'm sure I would about a hand spasm, but I would be amazed if a major brand decided to use it in the forefront of an ad campaign.

Also I am baffled by the disagreement in this "double entendre" talk .

If the woman in the Flake adverts had said "This is how one sucks a dick" and gone on to demonstrate on a Flake, that would be the equivalent of this advert. Instead it's "Ooooh, lookameeeee, I'm naked and in a baaaaath, and ooooh, a chocolate bar, MMMMMmmmmMMMM, I love to suck this bar..."

The advert is superficially about her in a bubble bath eating a chocolate bar: that is the primary meaning (text). If you'd never heard of oral sex you couldn't possibly get anything else out of it than that; but anyone over the age of 12 sees the subtext because, y'know, it's not trying to hide. But it isn;t explicit, it's implicit.

That is entirely different to this advert, in which the primary message is "so there I was jacking off my boyfriend" and the Maltesers symbolise the ejaculate. That's not an implied subtext.

Well all this talk of malteesers has made me fancy a bag now so the adverts definitely doing the trick. And I find it lighthearted and funny too. Win

I know the girl in the deaf maltesers advert Genevieve Barr. She is a very accomplished actress and a lively charismatic person.fuck you with your 'poor taste' comments!

I agree with you op. There is no double entendre in the advert and I do not see why the fact that this young woman is in a wheelchair makes it somehow ok to mime wanking someone off and then using props to illustrate him ejaculating as a means to sell maltesers! The disability is totally irrelevant when considering the taste/decency (yes, yes wholly subjective but this is what op wants to discuss here) of the advert. I cringe a bit for all the participants and can't say I'm looking forward to the deluge of stupid smutty ads that will no doubt follow.

OK a8 but not the advert being discussed here.

As it happens though, you raise an interesting point which I don't think has been discussed here.

I think that is a good example of what's wrong with the advert in question: the old "boyfriend's dog ate my..." (diaphragm) (makeup bag) (knickers) whatever is ground that an advert would totally cover as a matter of course, so adapting it to a scenario applicable to a disabled person is laudable. Which is what I wish they'd done with the sex ad.

OP has a problem with other people not entirely agreeing with them at all times.

The adverts were a result of Mars entering a Scope competition and working with them. Behind the scenes explanation here very worth a watch.

The ads were copywritten from real events.

I have only seen the wanking one and I find it unfunny tbh but I am not offended.

I haven't seen the ad yet but surely the disability is linked to the handjob type action? I'm just going by how the OP has described it, as in not an intended wanking act but a spasm at the wrong time and the bloke got the wrong idea? So showing that there are certain times when you really don't want your hand to spasm e.g. when holding an open bag of yummy maltesers?

Anyway, this thread has made me think two things:

1. These adverts upset me. The sound of those perfectly good little chocolatey balls hitting the ground is like a hammer blow to my heart.
2. I want some Maltesers. OP, you're an advertiser's dream.