Food for Thought: The "Fling"... Too Much?

The Fling is a skinny, 85-calorie chocolate "finger" with hot pink packaging and tag lines that invite you to "pleasure yourself" with the "naughty, but not that naughty" treat.

Ahem. Pleasure yourself with a chocolate finger? My apologies but I am inclined to an eighth grade ewww.

What's a word more in-your-face than "innuendo"?

The Fling is the first new chocolate bar Mars has introduced in more than 20 years and this http://www.flingchocolate.com/ ? A half-hearted forced attempt at "Sex in the City" cheekiness? Ugh.


















At first I wondered if I was being too sensitive to the redundant links to females, chocolate, and sex. However, I found many articles just as intolerant of the campaign.

The NPR site interviewed Lisa Johnson, the co-author of Don't Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy — and How to Increase Your Share of This Crucial Market. "The overall campaign feels weird," Johnson stated. "It feels creepy."

The article goes on to pose this question and now I ask the same "Is this hyper-feminine, hyper-sexualized marketing coming on too strong?"

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104213954