I hate Christmas ads, because I hate Christmas. Why? Because it’s depressing. Not “seasonally” depressing. No, because the World decides for two-ish months to be somewhat nicer to each other during a fake holiday of consumerist gluttony when many of the “inspirations” of the season emanated from an area of the world where, right now, groups of people are—rather than be nicer to each other—committing human atrocities against each other the likes of which should be making ad-makers—especially in Kristmas kRaZy England—maybe dial back the jocularity a smidgen (Excepting the one or two brands who’ve made their ads about charity).
So in honor of the thousands of civilians dead and dying right now in the “Holy Land” area, here’s my favorite X-Mas ad of 2023.
K-MART (Australia)
MERRY HAMMAS! OK, not an “ad”, but a ham bag that was for sale at K-Mart. Was. The Australian Jewish Association reacted very unmerrily:
“Check out the special Christmas bag currently available via K-Mart online. Yes, it’s real!!”, the AJA tweeted, with an image of the bag.
“Although this is potentially funny (the AJA committee has tossed around some non-PC jokes) it’s really not a good look. We suspect some product manager may cause the company some embarrassment. So we’ve politely written to Wesfarmers corporate suggesting the product be pulled”.
K-Mart pulled the bag and responded:
“We got it wrong on this occasion, and we apologise unreservedly. When designing this product we clearly didn’t think through all the implications and the product has been removed from sale”.
When eating your Ham-as a group on December 25th-maybe pause and reflect for a fucking second.
oooh, touchy