These horrible children’s voices Haribo adverts are two of the most profoundly disturbing things I’ve ever seen.
The hideous glee in the actors’ faces, the juxtaposition of adult with child and all its terrible ramifications and the sheer saccharine gak of the whole affair.
I have a big problem with using children in adverts, I don’t really see how there’s any reasonable objection to this perspective. Using children to assist in your attempts to get more money out of people strikes me as fundamentally objectionable and rather grubby.
There’s something oozingly, hazily and sickeningly wrong about this. It’s hard to put in words – and I didn’t need to tell you why. You just know that, one some level, there’s something wrong here. Something awful.
Grown-up people should not eat Haribo – this is all the evidence you need. It’s infantile, infantilising and just so remarkably wrong and if you don’t stop this is what happens.
Seriously, who thought these Haribo adverts are a good idea? Who dreamed it up and, more to the point, have they had an intensive course of counselling? And do they rub their hands, like Lady Macbeth, in an effort to cleanse themselves of the terrible crime they have committed?
This stuff, right here, is why I couldn’t be an actor. I simply couldn’t **** it up to this degree without sitting in darkness for a long time thinking about what I’d done. I don’t blame the actors in question – they’re only making living – but this is basically the acting equivalent of making someone lick your shoes.
These Haribo… things are not simply terrible adverts, they’re just horrid creations that have no place in any kinda of sane or decent world. Though, handily, they provide a perfect example of what Haribo amounts to: infantilising bullshit.