Trojan Commercial Rejected: TV Keeps It Classy

A Trojan ad has just been rejected by Fox and CBS.

The ad features a pig hitting on a woman in a bar. She is not interested. After he goes to the men's room and gets a condom, he turns into a 20-something guy. Problem solved...he has evolved.

Trojan's Vice President of marketing explained:

"The 'Evolve' ad does a nice job of being humorous, but it's also a serious call to action," Mr. Daniels said. "The pigs are a symbol of irresponsible sexual behavior, and are juxtaposed with the condom as a responsible symbol of respect for oneself and one's partner."

CBS and Fox find this too suggestive. Keep in mind that the average age of the CBS viewer is about 60 (I think old enough to know about this seamy side of life) and Fox actually has a reality TV channel that shows "Sexy Cam" which is billed as "not your parent's hidden camera show." (The "spicy modern twist" features -- surprise! -- such situations as, "two beautiful women ask you to take their picture...The girls smile and open their raincoats: to expose their bare breasts!")

But anyway. Pigs, pigs, sex, sex, I thought this morning as I read the article. A random pairing, but sadly, it was jogging my memory from something else I'd seen recently. Ah yes, I'd been home on Saturday night feeling sorry for myself and channel-flipping when I happened upon some show on the Discovery Channel. I can't be sure, but I'm guessing it was "Dirty Jobs."

At first I saw merely a really fat pig ambling around an enclosure. Cute! She was snorting her way about the pigsty merrily enough, until the host of the TV show and the pig farmer brought out a truly beastly hog...Zeus of the pigs. She snapped to attention. (If pigs can snap to attention. I guess she sort of started lustily stamping her little hog-feet.) He hustled right up to outside the pen and starting huffing and puffing. I wasn't born yesterday. I could see where this was going...I thought. Suddenly I heard one of the men say, (not exact quotes). "Okay, now this hog is here to get her excited. She sure is! Now, just brush the excess dirt off her vulva."

Followed by an extreme close up of said pig vulva and aforementioned dirt.

Probably a sentence I hoped never, ever to hear, much less have demonstrated by the most gratuitous of close-ups. Truly. There's no gratuitous sex quite as gratuitous as hog sex. Isn't that sentence evocative enough? They didn't need to assure this viewer of the exact amount of dirt. Which begs the questions -- is there an optimal amount of dirt supposed to be there?

With that, one of the men pulled out a GIGANTIC turkey-baster sort of gadget, at which point I threw up in my mouth and changed the channel. I couldn't stick around to find out why Romeo and Juliet of the hog world weren't just allowed to consummate -- why we have to watch old Romeo Hog prance out, ready for love, only to watch from behind a pig fence while Juliet (given the old bait and switch!) was artificially inseminated (I presume) by some TV host.

For our viewing pleasure, I suppose?

I'll take the Trojan pig commercial, thanks.