A Halloween-themed ad from Twix has critics accusing the candy manufacturer of ‘ruining’ the holiday with a woke and confusing message on boys wearing dresses that has little to do with the celebration – or the product advertised.
In the ‘bite-size Halloween’ commercial, a young boy wearing a princess dress is defended from bullies by a witch nanny, who arrives at his house unannounced in a minivan while the child appears to be unattended. The nanny says she was hired by the child’s parents and she goes on to casually threaten two children questioning why the boy is dressed up when it’s not Halloween. In the last scene of the ad, a boy is making fun of the princess-dress-wearing boy at a park – the synopsis for the ad refers to him as ‘non-binary’ – and the witch makes him disappear. She says he will “probably” come back.
The ad ends with a “happy Halloween” message from Twix.
While the anti-gender-stereotype message is clear, many were left confused as there was no actual mention of candy, namely Twix, and the ‘bite-sized’ story had seemingly little to do with Halloween, save for the witch.
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“‘Cross dressing, satanism, Twix!’ is one hell of marketing pitch,” journalist Kyle Hooten added.
Others pointed to the confusing context surrounding an otherwise inclusive message, like the fact that a child is looked over by an unannounced witch who makes another child disappear.
Some liberal critics on social media have dismissed the “outrage” against the Twix ad, seeing nothing wrong with the message or witch and princess-dress-wearing child teamup to sell candy bars.
“If you're so emotionally fragile that this ‘ruins’ Twix or Halloween for you, you've got bigger problems,” one Twitter user wrote.
The new Twix ad, titled ‘The New Nanny,’ is part of a ‘Bize Size Halloween’ collection of short films, meant to tie into the Halloween holiday and, of course, to sell chocolate bars. ‘New Nanny’ is part of a collection of short films created by 18 young filmmakers from various backgrounds, produced by 20th Digital Studio. Twix, Skittles, and Snickers have sponsored some of the ads, which have aired throughout October on the channels Freeform, FX, and FXX.
Numerous companies have faced backlash in the past for injecting political and social messages into their advertising, like Gillette, which has gone through multiple boycott movements in recent years for advertisements aimed at delivering ‘woke’ messages. One ad faced criticism for targeting trans men, while another took aim at ‘toxic masculinity’.
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