I ended up wasting time poking about on Youtube tonight and stumbled on an old local KFC ad from the 70’s. Obese kids back then were rare and I’m struggling to think why they were portrayed like that. It can’t of been attractive to a sizeable proportion of their target market?
Then I came across this version made in 2005 that never went to air. It’s an interesting remake of the 70’s one, but a totally different style to the way their current ads ended up.
The offputting thing to me is the pushing out of the brother from the car. It’s what you’d expect from a cartoon, but doing the same thing with real people feels a bit much to me.
As far as the obese kids go, my WAG is that obesity has been traditionally linked with gourmands and epicureans, so who better to turn to for advice on delicious fried chicken then a fat person? If they eat more, it means they have more “experience with…”
They had a whole campaign with those kids, where you could get free colouring books with puzzles and stories in, starring Hugo and his sister whose name I forget. I do recall the bad guy in the stories was called Reynard Fox, though…
Before obesity was seen as a disease, many just saw it to mean that the child was well-fed. In the song they say something about “getting thinner” in the back seat, meaning that while all the animals outside were well provided-for, these kids were being neglected. (I know it doesn’t make sense, but if their ribs were showing that might be seen as going too far.) So it probably was an attempt at “parent guilt” rhetoric.
My little WAG was meant more as just an excuse to call New Zealanders weird, but you’re right about the parent guilt perspective. Lots of people in generations past viewed chubby kids as healthy kids. Lord knows my grandmother, bless her heart, would always give my mother grief for letting me be so thin. Despite the fact that she suffered from type 2 diabetes.
