This disturbing advertisement for the Easy-Bake Oven features a father stalking his own daughter. In it, a Dad watches from the cover of darkness until the opportunity to commit a heinous act of a violation of trust presents itself. Alarmingly, he would have have to hide and watch Suzie cook for 20 minutes or more, since an Eeasy-Bake cake takes forever to cook under that puny light bulb. Not only is the dad shown to be obsessive and weird, he is evil enough to frame another child for his act. When you think about it, in stealing Little Suzie's metaphorical cake he is also robbing her of her child-like innocence.
The producer of this ad may have been trying to emulate the playful cartoon-noir of a Scooby-Doo mystery but the images of an adult male hiding in a darkened room watching a little girl play homemaker just comes across as creepy.
All this story needs is Little Lulu and Tub by trying to figure out who the Phantom is before Tubby deduces it's Mister Moppet.
ReplyDeleteOh, it's Laura Palmer: The Early Years.
ReplyDeleteI never used to think this ad was all that creepy, but those eyes in panel #2 are just feral.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the ending is creepy in a whole different way. Dad's basically saying "food preparation is key to affection". Or in modern parlance, "gb2kitchen!"