Fun on the Farm

1935
Silent
6m

What seems a charming stop-motion rhapsody for Bourn-vita chocolate reveals some unpleasant racial insensitivity.

The first part of this Cadbury's cinema advert is delightfully charming. A troop of eggs are woken by a cockerel and march away in ranks. An accident on route sees the arrival of egg stretcher bearers to carry away the invalid, and two others go AWOL. But things get more troubling when our runaways are joined by two young black boys from a chocolate shop window.

The appearance of stereotyped black characters in 20th century advertising is sadly not uncommon. What makes it particularly insensitive here is that as the eggs, wheat and milk dance into a tree trunk to be followed by the boys, it becomes apparent that these twins are being used to directly represent the ingredient of chocolate itself. The short was produced in Gasparcolor, with the cel animated logo of the bird at the start of the film common to all productions in this format.

Animated Ads

British animation won great success as an entertainer, but it has long had a lucrative second career in sales

In cinemas and on TV, animated adverts have frequently outshone the main attraction. In the early days of the cinema, animated ads were often relative epics, with five-minute comic encounters leading to a pack-shot punchline. The arrival of commercial television in 1955 brought the animated ad down to bite-size, but if anything they packed an even harder punch. Advertisers found that animation could soften the edges of a hard sell approach, and bring cartoon brand characters to life.