Impossible

Smucker’s would like you to associate the favorite American pastime of sitting on your ass in front of a TV with eating ice cream and their toppings. This fits perfectly with our relentless pursuit of an idealized culture.

This ad is designed to make a quick impression but doesn’t hold up to deeper evaluation, which is what I live for.

Accolades: the messaging is well crafted. The typical location for eyes to land when scanning a page is the upper left. Notice that all the important stuff is there, resulting in the delivery of: smucker’s logo > toppings > sundaes > movie > smucker’s. Well done! And the bottom left shows bottles of yummy toppings propping up DVD’s. A new abiotic symbiosis is born!

Not accolades: the improbability of the sundaes. They’re idealized, mythical creations on a fake tablecloth. If they weren’t photoshopped, it certainly took a food stylist multiple attempts to make them just right, with an Awfully Large Scoop. They could be formed from mashed potatoes or ground, bleached collagen, because within moments under a hot studio light the ice cream would melt all over.

And look at the size of the sundaes being held by the family. The single scoops of ice cream are bigger than grapefruits! I’ve never seen a scoop that big in my life!

• the sundaes they’re holding are PERFECT. The toppings have just the right drizzle and spread
• nobody is eating because of you stuck a spoon into something that big, the ice cream would squish out the other side. In fact, eating these would be unpleasurable unless you were outside in a swimsuit with a garden hose
• there are no napkins
• those half-basketball-sized bowls would be too cold to hold
• the mother’s spoon isn’t even oriented toward her eating hand
• They’re holding their sundaes like crystal balls. They’ve looked into the future and see misery
• (BTW, this is a family of five. Their teenage son is upstairs in his room with the door closed because the family movie choice sucks.)

I’d love to lock the doors and make those models eat. I’m assuming in the context of this photo that they’ve had dinner. If they were forced to eat all the ice cream and not leave the room, there’d be ruined clothes, ruined couch and piles of mom’s vomit at the base of the stairs.

This is a poster for immoderation. I wonder what the Buddha would say.