THE ADVERT CALENDAR OF ADVENT: 8: Irn Bru
I have to make a confession. I haven’t actually seen this ad on the TV. I can’t remember seeing many Irn Bru ads down south for a while actually, and I guess the sugary pop market tends to advertise when they can hit the kiddies rather than me. It is quite probably a Scotland only advert. However it did pop up on an inspiration finding YouTube search and, well, it is rather good. Irn Bru take on the Snowman.
Parody ad’s are difficult to pull off, though here it seems they have the permission of Raymond Briggs, as this copy of the Snowman seems spot on. From that it is just a hop-skip and a jump away from an Aled Jones alike* singing some slightly off words and away you go. But what is nice is that the animation is nicely expressive, and whilst the joke is obvious, the craft in the whole thing does give you a genuinely good feeling. A better feeling certainly than having to sit through the whole bloody Snowman at Christmas. One assumes that Briggs allowed the ad because he took is sick to the back teeth with “we’re walking in the air” and its annual sap-fest. Its easy to forget that the majority of the Snowman is a silent movie after all, with this song rattling round constantly. What is nice about this ad is that it feels more like a beer commercial, a Carling ad from the late 80′s rather than a soft drink. And that is exactly the attitude Irn Bru want. (It misses a trick by not including a parodic Coca-Cola truck somewhere jacknifing on icy roads though.)
*Indeed, just like in the original, as Aled doesn’t sing on the original either. He just cashed in on it.
Pete Baran in FT • 3,786 views
i inteviewed briggs once — he is the WORLD’S BIGGEST SOURPUSS EVAH with KNOBS ON x 10000000000000000000000000000
I only know of one telly sighting in Scotland: my colleague saw it one night last week. Can you name all the tourist attractions in the advert, btw?
OK!!! Here are the geographic references
1) Falkirk Wheel!!!
2) Forth Rail and Road bridges!!!! (Blooper alert!!!! The rail bridge looms first, and then on the next shot the road bridge before the rail bridge!!!!)
3) A brief flash of Edinburgh Castle rock!!!!
4) Edinburgh New Town, in particular George Street and the Assembly Rooms!!!!
5) National Gallery of Scotland!!!!!!!!
6) Princess Street Gardens!!!!!!
7) The monster bit is obviously Loch Ness!!!! Maybe I’m seeing things but as they turned into the loch, the “monster” actually looked suspsiciously like a submarine, so I’m wondering if that’s a reference to the base on Holy Loch!!!!!
8) The Glenfinnan Viaduct!!!! But what is that steam train goinf across it?!?!? It doesn’t seem like the Flying Scotsman…
9) Urquhart Castle!!!!
10) The video screen at the top of the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall!!!!
11) George Square in Glasgow!!!! (Blooper alert!!!! They’re flying into the opposite side of the square that they would be coming into if they came from the Concert Hall!!!!)
12) That church off Buchanan Street!!!!
13) Glasgow City Chambers!!!!!!
So, as you can see, it’s about as geographically consisten as your average episode of Taggart!!!!!!!
A pedant writes:
9) is actually Eilean Donan Castle. You can see Urquhart Castle in the Loch Ness scene though, confirming that it is, in fact, Loch Ness.
Surely the train on the Glenfinnan Viaduct is the Hogwarts Express?
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