Note: It was initially my intention to try working this in as another edition of "Horrifying Advertising Animals", but all the while I had the voice of David St. Hubbins from Spinal Tap bellowing in my head: "They're not animals, they're signs of the Zodiac!" Fine, it can stand on its own.
Somehow or other Cadbury's Creme Eggs managed to crank out an awful lot of UK marketing mileage from a question that I seriously doubt very many level-headed people cared to complicate: "How do you eat yours?" (or alternatively, "How do YOU do it?"). The implications of this campaign hook were both grotesque and banal. Banal, because how many variations can there even be when it comes to ingesting a piece of egg-shaped chocolate confectionery? The average consumer is either going to eat the whole thing together in bite-sized chunks like a civilised person (relatively speaking, given the product) or extract the fondant innards with their tongue or forefinger and then eat the chocolate shell; is there really a great deal else to be done with the thing? And grotesque because...do I really want to know some of the possible answers to the question I just posed? I think that forefinger option is frankly already pushing it. And is focussing on the various disgusting methodologies other people might apply to the act of eating likely to boost our own appetites? There reached a point, round about the new millennium, where the campaign started to lean quite heavily into those gross-out implications, with ads showing people dunking chips into the fondant and other mank images that I swear were only a step away from belonging in a John Waters movie (granted, IIRC the woman doing the chip-dunking was pregnant, which explains her oddball cravings, but I still can't say that I enjoyed the visual). Which, by coincidence or not, is around the time I went off creme eggs as a product. Possibly chips for a while, too.
The least repulsive campaign ever spun around the concept arose circa early 1990s, and hinged upon a cute idea - that the way you ate your creme egg, like your star sign, spoke volumes about your personality. What it was actually trading on, which meant absolutely nothing to me at the time, was 1970s nostalgia. The campaign was structured around a clever reworking of "Float On", a 1977 hit for soul group The Floaters, notable mainly for its spoken word interludes, in which each Floater gave his name, his star sign and his mating preferences in a style designed to recall the formalities of video dating. The TV ads mimicked this format in having a representative of each star sign step out before a microphone and deliver some slick statement on how they did it with their creme eggs, while the song's titular hook was modified into a jingle directly extolling the product. Having no prior reference for "Float On", my kid brain accepted it as an original tune, and to this day, whenever I hear the actual Floaters tracks my neurons are invariably wanting to work a "Cadbury's Creme Egg!" in there.
The campaign's real magic ingredient, though, was its visual wit. The characters in question were all claymation figures, courtesy of the ever-reliable Aardman and animated (I believe) by one of the studio's founding fathers, Peter Lord himself. The twist being that when they spoke about their respective pun-laden affections for creme eggs, they each morphed into the creature or item that symbolises their sign. As with Aardman production, even their advertising work, the amount of care, heart and craftsmanship that goes into the process is simply impossible to ignore. The ads had such a warmth and a vigor to them, and it's on that basis that they had me so enraptured as a small child...even when pretty much every other aspect of the premise was floating on right over my head (aside from the obvious - the pro-creme egg message). Astrology was not something I understood at the time; it was enough for me to think that the characters were turning into animals and other beings that somehow symbolised the quirky nature of their chocolate rapacity. Something else I was obviously not going to get was the very blatant sexual innuendo that permeated the campaign from top to bottom. Because yeah, that's the other thing that makes it an interesting series to revisit as an adult - it's hard to seriously entertain the notion that the characters are talking about creme eggs. Here, you get the impression that the eggs are really just the metaphor.
There exists a 90 second super-cut of the campaign combining all twelve star signs into one, but at the time I only ever saw these aired in three separate 30-second segments, with four characters apiece. Note that the ordering within the shorter versions differs from that of the full edit (and in neither case does the ordering align with that of the actual Zodiac). Here's a rundown of who appeared where, and what salacious quips they each came out with:
Ad #1: Leo/Gemini/Sagittarius/Taurus
- "Hi, I'm LEO! I eat the lion's share! Roar!" He has a rapacious appetite and he dominates.
- "GEMINI! And I like to slurp it!" "Bite it!" "Slurp it!" "Bite it!" I remain divided on whether these are actual twins we're seeing here or if the implication is that Gemini has something of a split personality when it comes to her mode of creme egg consumption. If the former, then they're licking/biting from the same egg, which is as gross-out as this campaign gets.
- "SAGITTARIUS! I could eat two or three on the trot!" Cos he's got hooves, see? Are centaurs known for their promiscuity or am I getting them mixed up with satyrs?
- "TAURUS! And I go at it like a bull in a sweet shop!" This is an odd one, for multiple reasons. Obviously it's a play on the expression "bull in a china shop", referring to a person who behaves gauchely in a situation that demands subtly or delicacy, with the words tweaked to make it more pertinent to the product being touted. Bovines aren't exactly renowned for being sugar addicts, but I suspect it was also intended to play as an amalgamation with another expression, "like a kid in a candy store", meaning to be overwhelmed by the array of wonderful options before you (now, that's a pun that might have worked a treat for Capricorn). That in turn makes me conscious of the fact that Taurus, like most of the swingers on parade here, has an American accent, so is he likely to say "sweet shop" instead of "candy store"? I guess what he means to convey is that he's going to throw his weight around with sheer excitement. Taurus wears a leather jacket, which is appropriate to his bull motif, although it's maybe a little morbid for him to be wearing the skin of the animal he ultimately morphs into.
Ad #2: Pisces/Aries/Libra/Cancer
- "PISCES! And I dive right in!" I'm a Pisces, and I find my sign's representation a bit on the mixed side. Visually it's great; I like how Pisces' sparkly sequin dress transforms into fish scales, and I absolutely dig how, as a fish, she's got both eyes on the side of her face like a flatfish (even if her overall design seems to be based more on a swordfish). But the innuendo's not the most tantalising, and I'm a little hung up on the fact that Pisces is represented specifically by TWO fish swimming in opposite directions - was there no way of working that concept in here? Or did they feel that the split personality motif would get too repetitive alongside Gemini? Incidentally, Pisces is the only female character to undergo any kind of beastly transformation (since Scorpio is a no-go in that regard - see below).
- "ARIES! I give it a good battering!" This ad so makes me want to be an Aries, given that sheep boy gets by far the sauciest innuendo. Fun fact: a snippet of his dialogue was also sampled in the Gorillaz track "Aries". His attire is, naturally, wool-themed - he wears a woolly sweater AND a jacket lined with wool. How is he not boiling under those stage lights?
- "LIBRA! I like to weigh up the alternatives! Weigh-hey!" I've seen a lot of speculation that Libra was voiced by Danny John-Jules, who is best known for playing Cat in Red Dwarf. I've yet to find any official source on the matter, but yeah, it certainly sounds like him. Libra seems like a tough sign to incorporate into this particular premise, since it's represented by an inanimate object, not a creature, but they managed to have him embody those scales in a way that feels slick and not excessively goofy. He holds an egg in each hand in a weighing motion, and his eyes turn into the dials. Gotta love the bonus pun he signs off with too.
- "CANCER! And I'm a shell man myself!" Nice crab nod, but unless I'm missing something, not much in the way of innuendo. And why is he wearing a hoodie and not a shell suit? If you ask me, Cancer got the most short-changed by this campaign. His sideways scuttling exit in the 90-second version looks cool, at least.
Ad #3: Aquarius/Scorpio/Virgo/Capricorn
- "AQUARIUS! And sometimes I get carried away!" Yeah, I'll say. Aquarius gets the kinkiest visual of the lot, in that she pours the contents of the egg all over her face and proceeds to lick it off. It's worth noting at this point that the creme eggs seen in this campaign are ALL disproportionately large, but Aquarius's really takes the cake. Hers is an ostrich egg edition.
- "SCORPIO! One nip from me and it's history!" Scorpio is, strangely, the only animal sign who doesn't morph into the critter in question. Instead, her pigtail rears up behind her in the manner of a scorpion's tail and slashes the creme egg open. She looks properly badass, but if you were hoping to see an actual scorpion then it's an anti-climax nevertheless.
- "VIRGO! Ah-hem. This is my first one..." For a while, Ad #3 was the only installment I was having difficulty locating on YouTube, and a large part of what was stoking my curiosity in the meantime (besides completism) was wondering how on earth they were going to represent Virgo. It's an awkward concept to have to work with in this context, more so than Libra. What they came up with was definitely clever - this girl's never had a creme egg before, and she's understandably nervous about putting something this dubious-looking into her mouth. Virgo is, unsurprisingly, the least sexualised of the bunch, with plain clothing that's supposed to convey a mix of chasteness (the collar blouse) and girlish innocence (the bow in her hair). For some reason she's also the only character to not speak with an American accent. I guess the idea was make her sound a less sultry than the others; she's out of place within the soul music ambience.
- "CAPRICORN! Mind if I butt in?" So Capricorn's style is that he's a thief. He steals Virgo's egg, in the only instance of two signs interacting, thus forcing her to retain her creme egg virginity. Capricorn wears a turtleneck sweater (presumably made out of mohair), has a goatee and also two weird bumps protruding from his head that I guess are supposed to be his hair? Dude comes off as somewhat of a creep (stick a pitchfork in his hand and in his human form he could pass for your archetypal cartoon devil), but he does make one heck of a charming aqua goat. In fact, if I'm applying to this fictional dating agency, then Capricorn's the one I'm coming away with, just on the basis of his winsome goat grin.
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