A Tortured Tummy Overdoses on Fried Food in This Wacky Ad for Oranges

So, you've decided to nosh on deep-fried butter and Armageddon Demon Chilis instead of Wonderful Halos mandarin oranges. Bad choice, kid. Very bad. Folks learn that lesson the hard way in punchy new ads from Wonderful's in-house agency and directors the Perlorian Brothers. First, we get an outrageously animated take on the runs, so to speak, as a distressed stomach bursts, Alien-style, from the body of a dude munching on skewers of crunchy double-fried fat globules, and proceeds to sprint off down the carnival midway: [kickout id="1"] Next, a suburban couple feel the burn when they sample hellaciously hot peppers at a backyard picnic: [kickout id="2"] The commercials constitute the second helping of Wonderful's "Good choice, kid" campaign, raising the temperature from last year's ads by expanding the definition of "kid" to include "the big kids in our lives—other adults—and the kinds of bad snacking decisions they sometimes make," Wonderful Agency creative chief Darren Moran tells AdFreak. "That evolution let us push the situations and the humor even further without fear of scarring small children for life." Both spots are based on the real-life experiences of the creative team. "I don't know what it is about dudes and spicy foods, but we all had had terrible, ill-advised, prove-your-manhood moments with hot peppers," says Moran. "I once had to relearn verbs after a late-night dinner in Hong Kong quickly devolved into [a game of] 'I'll-eat-that-for-a-dollar.' It's a familiar situation that we needed to make surprising. Every time we thought of a name for a dangerous-sounding chili pepper, we discovered it already existed." Dumb move, chowing down on foods you know are too spicy to handle. What genius would ever do that? Real military flame throwers were used to create the fire effect. "Sadly, some garden gnomes were harmed in the making of this commercial," Moran says. As for the guts-on-the-run spot, "When the writer pitched 'deep fried butter,' I thought it was an amazingly absurd set-up," he says. "Until he told me it actually existed, and he lived to tell the tale of eating one at the Iowa State Fair." "The stomach VFX itself were a fun challenge," Moran recalls. "Since no one—to our knowledge—has ever witnessed a stomach escape from a man's body in abject terror, we had to figure out the look, the movement, the attitude—basically create a character that in just a few seconds you believe is real and are rooting for. So, we asked [production studio] The Mill to think of the stomach as a galloping bald Chihuahua. They made it even weirder with the creepy little humanoid hands and feet." As it turns out, the lead actor grew progressively miffed as filming progressed. "He wasn't happy about having to bite into a non-fried tofu prop about a hundred times over the course of the shoot," Moran says. "He actually said he had been looking forward to getting paid to eat deep fried butter all day." CREDITS Client: Wonderful Halos Agency: Wonderful Agency President: Michael Perdigao Chief Creative Officer: Darren Moran Creative Director/Art Director: Jason Fryer Creative Director/Copywriter: Mike Condrick Associate Creative Director/Copywriter: Alan Snider Sr. Art Director: Colin Jahn Head of Production: Sam Baerwald Production Company: MJZ Director: The Perlorian Brothers Director of Photography: Jo Willems Unit Production Manager: Line Postmyr Sr. Executive Producer: Eriks Krumins Editorial: HutchCo Technologies Editor: Jim Hutchins Assistant Editor: Patrick O’Leary Executive Producer: Jane Hutchins Telecine: The Mill Colorist: Adam Scott Executive Producer: Thatcher Peterson Producer: Liza Kerlin Visual Effects: The Mill Executive Producer: Enca Kaul Producer: Andrew Gilson Creative Director: Tara DeMarco Lead Artists: Narbeh Mardirossian (2D), Tom Graham (3D) Mix & Sound: Lime Studios Mixer: Loren Silber Sound Designer: Michael Anastasi Executive Producer: Susie Boyajan

AdFreak

A Tortured Tummy Overdoses on Fried Food in This Wacky Ad for Oranges

Silly stuff from Wonderful Halos

David Gianatasio

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

David Gianatasio