M&M/MARS
Attn.: Consumer Affairs
800 High Street
Hackettstown, NJ 07840
Re: Why I Will Never Buy A Package of M&Ms Again
To Whom It May Concern:
Last night, while watching the Oscars, I experienced one of the most disrespectful and horrid television commercials of my life. The commercial was put out by your company and featured animated versions of your product entering a tableau from The Wizard of Oz – specifically, during the famous closing scene in which Judy Garland is waking up from her trip to Oz, only to realize that her family was representatives in her dream, and that, in fact, there was no place like home.
But instead of seeing her family, Judy Garland now wakes up to talking versions of your candies, and she reacts with delight. That you have violated the awe and wonder of the original scene, failing to respect its wonderful riffs on home and family, transforming it into a shameful sell for your product, and that you have seen fit to air this during a time block that is supposed to celebrate movies, demonstrates to me that not only is your company rapacious and shameless in its self-promotion, but that it has become a company I will now boycott with disgust.
Since you have seen fit to defecate upon a work of art, you have lost my business for life in the same manner that Hoover did years ago when they created a commercial in which Fred Astaire danced with a vacuum cleaner. I will avoid M&Ms, Mars bars, Milky Way bars, Snickers bars, Twix bars. If I ever own a pet, I will likewise eschew Pedigree, Cesar, Whiskas, Sheba, Kitekat, Trill, Aquarian and Winergy. No Uncle Ben’s rice for me. No Dolmio or Suzi-Wan, not that I would ever eat that crap anyway. And certainly no Klix or Flavia to drink.
Since your company cannot respect one of the most popular movies in the most popular medium of our time, I will neither respect nor endorse any of your products. I will encourage all of my friends to do likewise (at least three of them have agreed to boycott your company upon learning about the commercial this afternoon). I will also post this letter publicly on my website, so that others can recognize your company’s evils and refuse to give your company so much as a dime.
It’s probably a wise choice anyway, seeing as how your company hasn’t created a single good thing for the human body. But, oh, how you could have profited from my silly midnight munchies, or even the Halloween candy I buy for the kids each year, if only you had actually thought before destroying the poignancy of a really kickass movie.
Very truly yours,
Edward Champion
A similar letter should be sent to Nike. Andre Agassi as a Red Sox? He’d have to regrow the mullet to be convincing in that role.
Edward, to quote an Eagles’ song, “Get over it.”
If they used Christ’s Cruxifiction to sell candy I’d understand your reaction. But for a movie? Jesus in jogging shorts, who goosed your kumquats?
It means nothing. In the great scheme of things it will become naught more than a trivia question. To quote one Linus van Pelf, “Twenty years from now who’s going to know?”
So reduce your stress load and let it go.
(If you don’t I may send Emily Bronte-saurus for a short visit. You really don’t want Emily coming by for a short visit. Her impact on your food budget would be the least of your worries.)
This is a serious letter? Really?
If you can sit back and let Madison Avenue urinate upon Art without batting an eye, congratulations. You’ve been conditioned exactly the way they want you to be.
If it was a product placement or sampling or a parody or an homage (even something along the lines of Billy Crystal’s pre-Oscar film), I wouldn’t have had a problem with it. It could be easily disregarded. But this was taking the footage from the actual scene and digitally replacing it with a product. Crass commercialism without respect for the source. And I’m only slightly less bothered with the idea of “getting over it” than I am with using a band as banal as the Eagles to make a point. 🙂
I’m w/ you, Ed. I found the ad really sickening.
ed – please please put this on petitiononline.com –
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ad-verse: on the hunt for offensive commercials
I wanted to introduce this feature with some original thinking, but that doesn’t mean the thinking has to be mine.