Animals in Advertisements. Part Two…

…Roosters, Tigers, Monkeys and even more Frogs

When I complained earlier about the nonsensical use of animals in advertisements, I didn’t even mention the worst of them all: cereal. Indeed the Kellogg’s company seems the absolute champion of animal (and consumer) abuse in their advertisements.


Take the regular Kellogg’s Cornflakes, for instance, which has a rooster on the box. Okay, I get it; the rooster is the bird par excellence that wakes people up in the morning. But first of all, why is this one green? Ever seen a green rooster? Surely staring at a green cock (pardon my French) first thing in the morning cannot be conducive for your mental health. But actually this is not my major complaint about Kellogg’s Cornflakes. The thing that puzzles me most is why this particular branch still exists. Surely there’s no worse breakfast imaginable than these flavourless flakes, which by the way look as if someone put an explosive vest on a piece of corn. Frankly, they taste like chicken feed. But wait a minute…


When I was about seven the family breakfast table suddenly had Kellogg’s Frosties as an alternative to regular cornflakes. Which meant that flavourless was now being replaced by something sweeter than a koala bear with a funny hat. From the frying pan into the fire… And it was no improvement in the looks department either. Frosties figures a tiger on the box, and whether we want it or not, this tiger is a fucking celebrity. Not only does every human on the planet know its smiling face, we know his name and even his favourite hobby! He’s called ‘Tony’ and plays basketball. What on earth? I’m trying to have breakfast, not a first date! But the one thing that bugs me most is the red scarf. What kind of artist comes up with giving a tiger a bright red scarf? What possible use can a tiger have for a scarf? Frankly, it looks a bit gay to me.



Nevertheless, it’s actually a fairly general stupidity of artists and cartoonists drawing up animals. Donald Duck, for instance, is famous for wearing only a baret and a vest, and we will all fondly remember Plons (family name: The Crazy Frog), who - rather alarmingly for a persona in a children’s program - only wore very tight Speedo swimming trunks. And sure enough, Kellogg’s got on to the idea of the frog with their brand of Smacks. For some reason, this one wears a cap and a jacket. Which (again) makes zero sense. Why the hell would a frog need a cap or a jacket? To not get wet? If they’d given the cap and the jacket to the one cleaning toilets, I would have understood. But not the one praising the puffy Smacks…

And finally, there’s the chocolaty flavoured Coco Pops, which occasioned the birth of a monkey called 'Coco'. This one clearly is the most pimped out of the cereal animals, as he’s donning a whole wardrobe. Not only does he have a baseball cap on, but he’s also wearing jeans and a T-shirt with his name on it. A casually clad, but slightly self-absorbed monkey, seems to be the image Kellogg’s wanted to portray. The question here, I think, is why does it need to be a monkey? Aha, you’ll deftly reply, because Coco Pops are brown, and so is Coco! But really, think about it. Isn’t that a bit racist?

Beaver bashing, duck and frog hygiene habits, canine scatology, cocky behaviour, tiger-related gender issues, amphibian paedophilia and finally monkey racism, do you now see the complexity of the problem with animals in advertisements?

Thank you.