Ho ho! Here’s my yearly round-up of Christmas advertisements. Ho ho! etc.
Aldi
It’s Christmastime, so I find myself once again typing questions such as “What’s Kevin the Carrot’s problem?” and “How do carrots reproduce?” into Google. I hate Kevin the Carrot. Aldi’s festive root vegetable is a menace. His hair is leaves. His eyes are seeds. His mouth is a cruel slit. He wears clothes like a man. His dog is made of cauliflower and, though cute, is a biological abomination, a cauliflower lie. Indeed, Kevin the Carrot’s whole existence is a lie.
This year he’s “marrying” his fiancee, Katie the Carrot (odd she has the same second name, but anything goes with these freaks), after which he will be eaten, along with his delicious food friends. Like a German businessman on the dark web, being eaten is Kevin the Carrot’s greatest desire.
Aha! Here we go: “Carrots reproduce asexually.” (I did not research this very thoroughly.) Carrots don’t have weddings at all! Kevin the Carrot is, scientifically speaking, a wanker.
READ MORE
Boots
In this ad an anthropomorphic cat with a shoe fetish lives in a medieval European town where he walks around on his hind legs in cruel mimicry of the human townsfolk. He needs to find gifts for Christmas so makes his way to a branch of Boots – making him, quite literally, Puss in Boots.
Puss is wearing a hat and a coat and big boots and no trousers, which means he has a conception of clothing and nudity yet is flaunting decency rules nonetheless. If I was to go to Boots dressed like this cat (stop picturing this: it’s good for neither of us), I doubt I’d be so welcome.
The twist is that Puss lives in a sort of polyamorous quintuple with Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella and a handsome prince. They go to a party at the Snow Queen’s house and dance to the music of Duran Duran, which is, you’ll be shocked to hear, also from the olden days.
[ Christmas TV ads 2023: Patrick Freyne on Aldi, John Lewis, Boots and moreOpens in new window ]
John Lewis & Partners
Amid the bustle of Christmas a sad middle-aged hunk discovers a wrapped LP among the gifts under the tree. He puts it on the record player and we hear happy-house piano. Suddenly he’s back on the yokes in a 1990s club, raving away happily.
His shy, incommunicative teen son, procurer of this musical gift, looks on from the hallway. The father looks at the son across a metaphorical dance floor and has a flashback to him as a baby and a small boy.
The happy house dance beats resolve into a sad moody air. They say nothing, for there is nothing to be said. Men cannot express their emotions because at any moment they might be called on to fight in a war. (Except for me, because I have a bad back and asthma and will probably get a cushy desk job.)
Nonetheless, the sentiment of this year’s John Lewis ad is clear: “You totally ruined my life, you little shit. I’d still be clubbing now if not for you. Rave 2 da grave!” Also, men would rather go back on the E than to therapy.
In the background, the women of the family are setting the table.
Argos
Will from The Inbetweeners, now a middle-aged man because of the tragedy of time, is carjacked by a blank-faced doll and a plastic dinosaur who make him go to Argos to buy his Christmas gifts. This terrifying scenario seems to have a happy ending, in that Argos turns out to be the perfect source for Will’s many gifts for Mrs Inbetweeners and all the little Inbetweeners. The terrifying blank-faced doll and plastic dinosaur still threaten him from the window of his home, however. “The nightmare is far from over” should be the tagline.
[ Aldi’s Christ the Carrot, Amazon’s fake kindness: The Christmas TV ads of 2021Opens in new window ]
Tesco
Tesco has made a bold move this year, depicting its aspirational Christmas marred by imperfect family squabbles over the dinner table. But it hasn’t realised that imperfect family squabbles are for showy amateurs. “Look at us squabbling in our new kitchen!” Pshaw!
Passive aggression, that’s where the true riches of Christmas lie: weaponised compliments (“interesting blouse, Sharon”), pained martyrdom (“Oh, don’t mind me, just hoovering during dessert”), suggesting midnight Mass to see who will back down first (“Yes, that does sound nice, Kevin, let’s do that”), leaving different drafts of your will around the place for the children to discover and fret about ... That’s how you do it.
Coca-Cola
Uncanny-valley seals and penguins and bears and sloths and storks and bunnies and puppies and chipmunks gaze with wonder at a fleet of festive Coca-Cola trucks. “The time of man is over!” their cute little AI-generated faces declare.
My favourite animals in this video are the hedgehogs, because they make surprised humanoid “oh” faces that would have David Attenborough himself swinging a baseball bat and screaming “Kill them all!” with blood splatter all over his face. Thankfully it is not real life. It is AI, and who cares if the number of wheels on the truck changes from shot to shot?
The time of man, or at least of human animator, is indeed over. There are no humans in this ad unless you count the strangely animated billboard of a winking Santa Claus. And I do not count that, for he terrifies me. Coca-Cola’s AI definitely wants to wear your face like a mask.
Barbour
Wallace from Wallace & Gromit is the original tech bro. Like Prometheus, he is forever being punished for his hubris. In this ad his Gift-O-Matic robot wraps and unwraps presents and, it is clear, will not stop until everything on Earth is wrapped and unwrapped, at which point he will no doubt set his beady little telescopic eye on the stars.
Wallace has once again played God and toyed with the fabric of reality. Before a minute is out the Gift-O-Matic blows up the front wall of the house and disrobes Wallace in front of the neighbours while Gromit, his world-weary hound, sighs. Gromit’s sighs are like philosophical treatises and will be treated as such long after society collapses.
M&S Food
Speaking of societal collapse, Dawn French’s descent into madness continues, aided by a teensy winged version of herself. (“Are you seeing a teensy winged version of yourself?” is a question on several mental-health questionnaires nowadays.) In this year’s escapade, enraged by a traffic jam, she hijacks an M&S Food truck and encourages a mob into a frenzied orgy of gluttony. Yum. This is by far the most successful Christmas ad I’ve seen this year, but that’s possibly because I’m very hungry.
