I can’t be the only person to think that Matteson’s new advert for its actually-quite-tasty smoked pork sausage is about as dirty as advertising gets. Like most sausages, the Matteson’s sausage looks a bit like a cock – if the cock in question is horseshoe-shaped and double-ended. I think it’s not unfair to say the creatives behind this advert have also noticed the similarity.
Taking a leaf out of the Tango playbook of advertising, the advert rather suggestively invites the viewer to imagine what you might do with the glistening twelve-inch, double-pronged horseshoe dual-phallus – the obvious answer being to insert it into…well, not most obviously a stir fry.
Anything that follows in the advert is overshadowed in my mind by the thought of what a young lady, for example, might do with it if left to her own devices. Or anyone else’s devices, to be honest.
It doesn’t take a genius to find similar-shaped items for sale on the internet, and cooking is presumably the last thing on the mind of people browsing such rubber-based tools. Which makes this product all the more bizarre – it’s almost as if it were made for this advert (though it wasn’t, the product’s been around for years). At least for how suggestive it looks then.
So what’s next? Cakes shaped like a pair of tits? Frankfurters shaped like two homosexual gentlemen engaged in what I’m told is known as docking? Perhaps some of that novelty-shaped processed meat made to resemble two big fat lesbians fisting one another? I don’t know whether it’s a sign of my getting older or society getting ruder, and I’m no prude, but I’m a bit discombobulated by the sheer high frequency of the inneundo in this ad.
Of course, the standard response to accusations of naughtiness is that it’s very much in the eye of the beholder – a slightly more sophisticated, if disingenuous version of the ‘he-who-smelled-it-dealt-it’ accusation – but it’s hard to see why else this Mattesons advert makes such a big deal of the growly voiceover, glistening close-ups and insinuation that there’s more going on in your brain than sticking your sausage on a pizza.
If you said the word ‘dildo’ on an advert you could probably expect the combined weight of Ofcom, The Daily Mail and those berks at MediaWatch to come crashing down on you like a ton of bricks. But place the thought of the act in someone’s head and you’re creeping in under the radar.
Thankfully while searching for this ad on Youtube I was relieved to find that I’m not the only one who has these impure thoughts. The video above pretty much represents where I’m going with this and though there’s no nudity – as suggested by the cover image – you certainly wouldn’t want to watch it at work. Brings a whole new meaning to the slogan “Mmm…Mattesons.”
• By the way, if anyone’s wondering exactly what act springs to my mind, it’s the second one down.