QotD: they're grrreat!
What or who is your favorite product mascot? Why?
I used to like the Smash Martians:
They used to roll around laughing at the ridiculousness of human beings and I found their laughter infectious ::linkThe Smash Martians were the stars of a 1974 TV advertising campaign for Smash instant mashed potato in the UK. They were a family of Martian robots who would watch humans laboriously preparing mashed potato the traditional way on TV. The robots would then mock what they saw by chortling as they heard how the "Earth people peeled their own potatoes, boiled them for 20 of their minutes, then smashed them all to bits" - instead of using Smash instant mash. The catchphrase 'For Mash Get Smash' is still an iconic and memorable advertising image within the UK. The 1970s adverts were voted TV ad of the century by Campaign Magazine ::link
Perhaps we should try more often to see ourselves from an outside perspective - there's plenty that we do, individually and collectively, that's ridiculous. We could do with more humour and less seriousness, less 'rightness', less entitlement.
The product was disgusting, by the way, and I only used it to thicken soups - the crazy Earthling way with mashed potatoes tastes infinitely better.