So where do we go from here?

To me, what makes advertising great is that the practice of selling something often takes on more unique and creative character than the item they are attempting to sell in the first place. Obviously, this is fairly necessary when you’re pitching something boringly monotone like HB pencils or steel lug nuts. You'd better find some way to make your pitch exciting if you want anyone to pay attention at all.

The question then is, how far is too far? Is there a line that can actually be crossed? For example, there’s an Italian company building caskets that actually creates and distributes an annual calendar featuring swimsuit and lingerie clad models posing with (or in) their products – which would be coffins of course. Leaving aside the total abandonment of basic good taste, or any taste for that matter, these pine-box promoters are using sex to sell death. Primal and raw maybe, but it’s a pretty time-tested linkage when you think about it.

This week an ad that caught me was an internet ambush from Mentos of all brands. You might be familiar with them from their moronically wholesome ads of a few years back where a group of almost always WASPily good-looking young people would be going about their respective days just as life would throw a frustrating curve at them (like accidentally sitting on a freshly painted white park bench while wearing a black suit). Instead of getting angry, the hero would always pop a Mentos and, in this case, begin rolling around on the bench and making the entire suit pin stripes. A surprised passerby would smile in solidarity with the hilariously jaunty response, letting us all know that life was no problem for people with a pack of Mentos.

It would seem the innocence of those days has passed. Mentos has taken a bit of turn with a website called www.mentoskisscam.com. Don’t go there – because it’s gone now, or at least it says “back soon.” But when it was in operation you really had to see it to believe it.

You go on the site and head into the “kiss cam” area where you can choose from either a busty blond hottie in a swimsuit or a handsome stud on horseback. You then watch a near full screen video of this woman (yes, I chose the woman – even my curiosity has limits) who is in the ocean before noticing you, and who then begins slowly walking towards you from the VERY cold water (and I mean take-an-eye-out cold water) all the while staring straight into your eyes. She gets closer and closer and then stops. A small pop up in the bottom corner tells you to give her a Mentos, so you use your mouse and drag a Mentos from an on-screen packet and place it near her mouth. She takes it in and licks her lips before then continuing to move closer still. All of a sudden a window pops up asking you to surrender your webcam to her. This freaked me out as I was convinced I was going to be observed, likely recorded and probably blackmailed by those skeevy voyeurs over at Mentos. I needn’t have worried. They wanted control of my webcam so my beautiful blond piece on the side could French kiss me through my computer.

No, I am not making this up – the full-face that covered my computer screen was acting all heated up and ready to go but would only start to move in to me as I moved my mouth in closer to hers for a little tongue action.

Now, while I am unsure as to what sort of specific damage saliva can do to an LCD screen or the exact size of tumor such monitor proximity can produce, I can report that sex on the internet would appear definitely poised to take a very large leap forward. To think there are not several hundred thousand porn sites out there testing this little application would suggest the future of sex is about to get even ickier. I can only imagine the types of attachments that soon we will soon be plugging into our USB ports.

I’m not sure why Mentos has decided to ride the AXE-train to attention but the whole “back soon” thing on the website could mean too many people were using the site and it crashed, maybe they figured out how to make the ad even better or they somehow realized they were acting shamefully.

Just kidding about the last one.

I’m certain the freshmakers will be completely up and running very shortly and leading us ever deeper into the final frontier of freakishly abnormal sexual relations – compusexual perhaps? – due almost exclusively to their desire to sell billions of tasty, chewy mints.

Where do we go from here? The thought boggles the mind.