We’ve covered the way stereotypical behaviour of women is portrayed in adverts here before, so it’s only fair that we cover that of men. So here goes:

McCoy’s crisps “ridged, thick and unashamedly colossal” depiction of men in their latest advert as homophobic, junior gangsters, without an ounce of loyalty makes me proud to be a man. It doesn’t get much better than this. I can only presume the brief for the advert said “What if Guy Richie directed a crisp advert”. Actually, even that would be better than what they got.

The ads shows a group of *mates* in a dark and dingy pub. They’re all wearing suits and shirts but no ties (This leads me to believe the men are part of an Eastenders/Miami Vice hybrid show. When they finish their pints they cruise up and down the canals of the Eastend, stood statuesque on their barges, the wind blowing through their hair etc).

One of them heads over to the jukebox to put on a tune. But disaster, someone bumps into him, he slips and presses the wrong button! As he heads back to his *mates* the dulcet tones of Puppy Love fills the pub.

Now, there’s no denying, by today’s standards, Puppy love is a terrible song. But when the bloke accidentally puts it on the jukebox, from the way people react you’d think he’d just raped a disabled choir boy on the bar. The looks the others in the pub give him are ones of pure disgust and of a burning desire to violently avenge this horrific crime.

“I mean, Puppy Love! What is he, some sort of poof?”

A giant vacuum tube descends, he knows he’s done wrong. There’s a look of sad resignation on his face as his McCoy’s are taken out of his hand and he’s sucked away.

Gone forever. His *mates* watch, turn back to their pints and forget he ever existed.

“Probably best, he might have been some sort of poof. He’d try some monkey business round my back door. Best shot of him really.”

The insinuation is obvious: real men don’t listen to Puppy Love but only real men are allowed to eat McCoys crisps.

But if you were guessing from this advert, who would be McCoys’ real man? Is he your ‘Sun reading’ man? Is he your ‘Jason Statham wanna-be’ man? Is he your ’suped-up Vauxhall Corsa driving man? Is he your Staffordshire bull terrier having sex with your crack-whore girlfriend on a sofa that’s inexplicably in the front-garden of your council house’ man? Is he your ‘petrified to do anything that might make other men think he doesn’t measure up to some archaic image of what it is to be a man’ man?

I think he is.

And guess what McCoys, that’s not the sort of man I want to be. So I might not be eating your crisps any more. Which is a real shame because they are different from normal crisps. Like you say they’re ridged and thick, and I like that texture in my mouth.

“You like that texture in your mouth?! What are you, some sort of poof?”

Judge for yourself: