It’s very easy to see how this would be considered creepy since even the Skittles ad showing the affliction known as ‘skittlespox’ is kind of disturbing in its own way. Some might go ahead and say ‘get over it’ and thankfully that’s pretty easy, but the implications of the ‘yogurt boy’ Skittles commercial is just kind of hard to process since one’s mind can go down a lot of different routes, and not all of them are as PC as a person might like to think. There are times when it boggles the mind as to how commercials are thought up and just what the writers might be thinking about when they come up with one idea after another. Companies pay millions of dollars from conception to realization to presentation, and this is the kind of production that comes out. Where would a person start on this one when trying to discern just what’s more disturbing? Some might actually mention the fact that the individual asking his butler for more Skittles should be able to get off his lazy butt and go get them himself, while others would obviously move straightaway to the humanoid yogurt thing in the other room and the fact that the butler has to call him over to ‘modify’ the Skittles. Seriously, there’s just something wrong with this commercial in a few ways and the yogurt boy is just the most obvious of them.
Really though, Skittles has been coming out with some seriously oddball commercials for a while. Anyone seen the one in which a man is ‘milking’ a giraffe that’s actively eating a rainbow like it’s cotton candy? Of course a lot of us have, as Skittles has the kind of clout and money to put up one commercial after another in order to remind consumers that they’re still around and are still every bit as popular as ever. In all fairness a bag of Skittles every now and then is pretty good since they’re just sweet enough without being too overpoweringly sweet and they can be a nice snack when one needs a small sugar boost. But more than one bag is definitely excessive since that’s a lot of sugar for one person after a while and the sweetness does become cloying after too many. Of course some might say of course it’s not, they could eat Skittles all day and night. Trust me, even Marshawn Lynch couldn’t eat Skittles for every meal and snack without admitting that they have their time and place.
But the ads, oh the ads. They’re cringe-worthy, they’re horrifying and a lot of them are borderline just…wrong. That’s what makes a lot of them funny however, and some of them enough to make a person wonder what in the world the writers are on when they’re coming up with this material. The fact that so much of it has been allowed to air is proof that society, for all that it wants content that’s insightful, thoughtful, and up to their standards, is still willing to let some of the strangest and most disturbing things in. And why not? It’s creepy for certain, but it’s a different look that a lot of people might have actually enjoyed and one that can’t really be stifled without having to write a new set of rules for what’s acceptable in advertising. So yes, Skittles skirts the edge of good taste and even makes commercials that are anything but sensible, but something must be working since the company has been selling one of the most successful candies in the history of sweets and have been doing so since the 70s. Just to remind some folks and let others know, Skittles was brought to America in 1979 after being introduced by the British, who started making them in 1974. It wasn’t until 1982 that Skittles were being made in the US, and after that the story is pretty much easy to guess since they went on to become one of the best known candies and one of the most popular thanks to the many different commercials that have come along since.
It’s very true that a lot of commercials leave people wondering just what they watched has to do with the product, but Skittles is one of those that has at least had some easy transition point that’s allowed people to realize just why they went with the idea they did. The yogurt boy commercial is still pretty creepy just because of what it is and because it looks so unsettling. But if one goes back into the history of Skittles commercials it’s easy to note that it’s not the worst among them by far and that there are plenty that might make someone say ‘damn, that’s messed up’. This is the world of advertising, someone’s always going to raise the bar.
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