Marmite Ad- “The Blob” banned in Britian - It’s just too damned scary!
Marmite ad banned from kids’ TV after parents complain of terror and nightmares
“Ex-children”? As in, former children? As in, adults? What an odd word choice.
I thought the ad was funny, but it probably would freak out my toddler to see grown-ups screaming in fear.
Mmmmmmmmmmmm…
Marmite!
What?
Don’t they show the 1958 film The Blob on TV in Britain, ever?
Or Caltiki, the Immortal Monster? Or The H-men, or X-the Unknown (Heck, that’s British!) These are all old flicks that show the same damned thing.
Those kids are clearly too young to appreciate the true loveliness of Marmite!
Beware of Marmite
It creeps
And leaps
And glides
And slides
Across the floor
Right through
The door
And all around the wall
A splotch
A blotch
Be careful of Marmite!
AH!
Not marmite!
My favorite part? “Four parents complained that their children had refused to watch television after the ad was shown…” Really? And children between the ages of two and three were terrified by the ad? And restrictions were imposed after a grand total of six phoned-in complaints?
My hoax detector just lit up and went ping!
Probably not before the watershed.
Here is the case as described by the Advertising Standards Authority (the independent body that polices the advertising rules and regulations).
Those four parents should be grateful.
Thank you. It was fun to read about the ASA, which (apparently) was created by the advertising industry, is funded by the advertising industry, is staffed (along with a collection of above-reproach stiffs) by a number of advertising executives who are still employed by their advertising/marketing firms, and exists, basically, to enforce rules made by the advertising industry in an effort to police itself before someone less friendly takes the job. The fact that they use the word “independent” to describe themselves indicates a broad and boisterous sense of humor. Excuse me: “humour.”
This still looks to me like a ploy to draw attention to an ad campaign at the minor cost of missing the two-to-three-year-old demographic that spends its discretionary income on marmite. I have seen children frightened by something that happens on television, but not at that age: if it doesn’t cause discomfort or pain or vertigo or go BANG! loudly, children that young are pretty much fearless: mine wouldn’t have batted an eye at these images – I doubt they’d have paid them much attention. What’s more, the children I have known to be frightened of something they saw on television (a few, including myself, all older than three), were not frightened of the television set: maybe of other manifestations of whatever image scared them, but not of the box itself, any more than they’d refuse to drink out of a cup containing something they liked if they had once tried, in a cup, something they didn’t. Besides, how does one determine that a two-year-old is “refusing” to watch T.V., as opposed to being hungry or tired or colicky or just generally recalcitrant (or unusually intelligent)? Even besides that, what parent decides to couch his/her complaint to the ASA in those terms? Even if you’re training the kid to be a couch potato and resent this interruption, why would you tell anyone? Finally, and this may be the result of a cultural gulf even I, as a taciturn New Englander, don’t comprehend, but a national agency that takes itself as seriously as the ASA apparently does acts on the basis of six phone calls? I do not have the knowledge yet that would allow me to believe it. Hoax detector says: * pingpingpingpingpingpingpingpingping*.
No one is ever too young for Marmite!
I know all these words, but I can’t figure out what it means. What is “not before the watershed”?
I think I’m too old for marmite. Speaking as an ex-child, of course.
Ah-you have the hoax detector that lights up and goes ping.
It’s a BBC article - they don’t have commercial advertising, but the principle is the same anyway.
The graped section of the above is not insignificant; there does indeed exist such a less-friendly entity (ofcom), which is why self-regulation actually works rather well here.
I’m certain you’re getting a false signal from your hoax detector there. The regulatory bodies will act upon a single complaint; they may not uphold the complaint, but they do investigate.
I know this from experience, because I was one of a fairly small number (more than 6, but not many more) who complained about a TV advert for Fosters Lager that depicted decapitation; the complaint was upheld in almost exactly the same way as the Marmite one; the advertiser voluntarily stopped showing the ad before the watershed, but an official ruling was also made afterwards.