You’ll Get Gay-o For Our Mayo
Can anyone explain what the point of the gay Heinz mayonnaise ad was supposed to be? That only gays like mayonnaise? That everyone from New York (where there is no Heinz mayonnaise) is gay? Or was this just one of those ads where the only point was to make you ask whiskey tango foxtrot?
June 24th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
I don’t think it was intended to be gay. It may have been scripted by someone who is gay and not talented enough to write books, movies, or TV shows. I think it just wanted to say that mom can be a deli short order chef when she uses Heinz mayonaisse. Having had to, on occasion, eat at a deli during my downtown job I could have told them that the ad was a loser. I much preferred my mother’s cooking. My father’s too, for that matter.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Holy crap, even me, Mr “Hey, I’ll support your right to be with who you want but it definitely trips my Ick-Meter” thought that was friggin’ hilarious.
*Sigh* People get their panties in such a wad over the stupidest of things.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:15 am
I wasn’t offended by the ad; I just don’t get the point. Then again, others must have been; I can’t imagine they ended the campaign just because 10,000 Xrlqs emailed them “huh?”
June 25th, 2008 at 11:52 am
I got it. “Mom” is using deli quality goop, therefor she’s like the stereotypical gruff deli worker.What I simply don’t see is it promoting homosexuality. Heck the kiss was practically on the cheek.
Of course, Heinz painted themselves in a corner. The stodgy will scream if they don’t take it down, the Football Bats will scream if they do.
I bet sales of mayo drop at the same time.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Some of my buddies on a Usenet dirtbike forum would have a different reaction to this and the mayonnaise: in terms of what revenge might be served-up by a capricious or vengeful waiter – wronged of tips or just “getting even”, in the coleslaw…
June 25th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
I think the point was that there are at least 200 stupid people in the UK.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:52 am
If you saw that and thought it was a “gay” ad then it means you didn’t get the humor. That could be the fault of the ad agency – not everyone has the same sense of humor, and it doesn’t make you stupid if you didn’t get it. I’d think if they’d showed the ad to 100 people at least a few wouldn’t have gotten it either, and some would have come away offended, which should have alerted them to a problem.
I think Robb explained it pretty well – the deli guy is Mom. If they’d instead shown Mom as a woman at the beginning, but when she opened the mayonnaise jar she morphed into that deli worker guy, you probably would have gotten it. I wouldn’t have laughed then – just another dumb ad – but you probably would have.
June 29th, 2008 at 3:44 am
I got it, but regardless of the fact that the deli guy was “really” mom, the visual of two guys mouth kissing was creepy and I shouldn’t be subject to that without any warning. The same thing goes for other gross things you see on TV like old people making out or someone putting deodorant on their hairy pit or a surgery where you surf in just as the surgeon is peeling back the face.
There should be an “eeww” blocker for TV that lets me not see stuff like that.