I’d been noticing lately how sexist the Twix commercials are, so I googled a bit, watched some of their commercials on youtube and then went to check out www.twix.com. I really wish I hadn’t.
First off, the latest Twix ad campaign, with commercials telling us to eat a Twix bar “When you need a moment to chew it over” is not only offensive to women, but men as well. Apparently Twix thinks that men are either too stupid to think of the proper things to say, or they are manipulative jerks who need twix-time to plan their next lie. Most of the men I know are neither stupid nor blatantly manipulative liars. Yet Twix commercials would have me believe they are.
Just in case you can’t recall any of these commercials, I’ll refresh your memory….
There is the one with an African American couple, where the woman asks her hubby if her booty looks fat in the jeans she is wearing. Apparently the man thinks that it does but doesn’t want to tell her, instead he shoves a twix bar into his mouth and mumbles something unintelligible. His woman apparently understands that the noise he is making is a compliment, and she squeals with delight.
There is the one with the two guys in the bookstore reading “How To Score A Mega-Hottie” when an attractive acquaintance of one of the men appears. She’s apparently offended at the title of the book and exclaims, “What are you reading?”. Her male friend eats a twix as he searches for the right response. Turns out that the right response is to pretend he didn’t realize what the book was about. He turns to his friend and exclaims “Dude, what ARE you reading?!”. The woman is so enamored of the honorable fellow that she agrees to go have a cup of coffee with him.
Then there is the latest one, it takes place at what seems to be a party, where two young singles are chatting. The woman is saying how politicians suck, and the man nods until she pauses, where he blurts out, “You want to come to my apartment?”. She huffs and says, “What kind of girl do you think I am?”. He sees that he has committed an error and stalls to get his bearings by taking a bite of Twix. The Twix inspires him to do some ‘Tom-Sawyer-when-he’s-painting-the-fence-reverse-psychology’ type trickery, where he basically says to the girl, “Oh sorry, I thought you really cared about the world and would want to blog about injustices, but if…” she interrupts when she hears the word blog, “Oh blogging! I love blogging! Let’s go!”
It was bad enough that Twix portrays both men and women as idiots; showing men too stupid to respond appropriately, and showing women so gullible that they don’t notice the obvious consternation of the men as they formulate lies; but when I visited twix.com I realized that it was way more fucked up than I thought.
Twix.com features a longer version of the latest commercial I described above, but they made it interactive so that when the man can’t decide what to do next, you choose his next action.
Let me break the choices down for you:
The first choice is after the fellow’s “Wanna come to my apartment” gaffe. We can tell him to “BE SHALLOW” or “BE DEEP”. Shallow apparently equals honest, because if you choose that option he goofily tells her that he thinks she is sexy, very sexy. Naturally, she slaps him and leaves. If you choose to ‘be deep’ he pulls the reverse psychology trick and, naturally, she falls for it and starts to leave with him.
The second obstacle is when the woman bumps into another male friend on the way out. She invites the friend to come along, and we’re given the choice to either “BE MEAN TO BRUCE” or “KILL HIM WITH KINDNESS”. Being mean, like being shallow, equals honest, and that option makes our man confess that he doesn’t want Bruce to come along. Bruce gets his feelings hurt, and starts to whine and cry. The girl feels bad for him, calls the Twixguy a jerk or something, and tells him to get lost. Choosing “Kill him with kindness” gets Bruce assaulted; we are shown that the right thing to do is act nice and shake hands, but squeeze so hard that you injure the other person. Now, with a sore hand, Bruce says he can’t go, instead he will get some ice for his hand. The woman, oblivious to the violent power play that took place right in front of her, agrees with Twixguy that it’s too bad Bruce can’t come after all, and they head out the door.
The third choice happens outside, where the woman runs into another “acquaintance”, this time it’s her ex-lover Francois, who snottily says she looks so sad and that it must be because she misses him. She is just too stupid-shocked to think of a response and looks helplessly at her new Friend the Twixguy for help. Here we can choose “GET INVOLVED” or “DON’T GET INVOLVED”. Not getting involved results in Twixguy shrugging and saying, “Oh this is awkward.” The woman is upset at that, and ends up ditching twixguy and desperately running after Francois. If we choose to get involved, Twixguy emotionally wounds Francois with the stinging rejoinder “Uh, maybe it’s your stupid hat that she misses.” Grateful, our girl proudly clutches Twixguy’s arm as Francois slinks off, shamefully removing his beret.
Finally, Twixguy gets her back to his crappy studio apartment, where it becomes obvious that he doesn’t have a computer. Ever-oblivious, the female asks, “So where do we log on?”. Again, we get to decide what happens, either “BE HONEST” or “CONTINUE THE CHARADE”. At this point, I really thought the correct option was to be honest. I thought there would be a moral to this tale, but I was wrong; being honest gets the man tazed. On the other hand, continuing the charade by pretending that he has been burgled gets our man sympathy and, we are led to believe, some sex.
Ok, them’s are the facts. My reaction, of course, is that Twix sucks. What in the fuck are you thinking? Who is the marketing genius that came up with this campaign? The Twixguy in this little interactive adventure is as close to a textbook example of an acquaintance rapist as I’ve ever seen. I wonder, if eating a twix wasn’t able to help him lie and scheme for sex, would he instead be using roofies? No, actually, I don’t wonder that, it’s plainly obvious that he would.
So, to sum up… Twix:
1. Doesn’t understand that many African American men prefer women with a nice booty
2. Doesn’t understand that many African American women are proud of their big bootys
3. Offers an instructional interactive video for aspiring date-rapists.
4. Believes that men are stupid and slow.
5. Believes that women are ridiculously idiotic,
——-a) so idiotic that we can’t tell when a man is actively struggling to concoct a lie.
——-b) so idiotic that we will follow a man we just met to his apartment if given the chance to blog.
6. Likes to rely on the time-tested comedic gold of stereotyping gay guys (Bruce) and french dudes (Francois).
Just yuck, Twix. You used to be sweet, but now you’re just bitter, and not in the Happy way, but in the mean way. Do you really think men in their 20’s are the target demographic for chocolate? I can only assume that some ad agency researched and learned that men in their 20’s don’t buy Twix, and they convinced you that you needed to spend some big bucks on commercials to win over that demographic. Guess what though? Men don’t eat a lot of chocolate. Some do, but they won’t make a special trip to the store just to get some the way women do. Your stupid ads aren’t going to convince men to buy Twix bars, but they will piss off and alienate the loyal women who have been buying your product for years. Way To Go.
