4

Using Child Prostitution To Sell Floor Cleaner

If you want to raise a few eyebrows at the office, tell them your favorite vacation spot is Thailand. The crude jokes they'll mutter about an affinity for underage prostitutes will, sadly be based on harsh reality. The country is a hotbed for sex trafficking and the stupendously gross ancillary industry of "sex tourism." It's troubling, shameful, and insane, but for Penguin floor cleaner, it's also a fun way to engage with consumers!

Hakuhodo"This is the seventh-darkest thing we've ever done." -- the troubling words of Penguin's marketing director, still at large

In this ad, titled "Soliciting," a man with a comically visible boner is paying a schoolgirl for sex in a bathroom with a notably shiny floor. The joke is that the floor is so clean you can see the sex crimes on the floor even if you are too ashamed to look directly at them (thus the tagline "Filth has nowhere to hide"). Which is, weirdly, one of the few specific reasons to NOT have a clean floor. This floor cleaner is trying the old joke formula of "game of chicken with your human soul," but maybe didn't create enough context for it to work. No one should have ever had to say this, but you can't go from zero to sex slavery in a single floor cleaner ad. You need to build to it over the course of a long floor cleaner ad campaign.

That tagline is equally awful. It's a play on words worthy of a mediocre Family Circus cartoon or even a below-average greeting card, but also seems to suggest that this floor cleaner is some kind of hero for helping you watch a guy pay a teenager for sex? That somehow a streak-free shine at an affordable price is helping shine a light on the horrors of the sex trade?

3

Using Murder To Sell Butt Shields

Look, nobody enjoys spreading their butt cheeks across a public toilet seat. They are where the worst diseases and smells that come out of us battle against the maintenance skills of the saddest and most unmotivated people among us. And while men can relieve themselves in public restrooms on their feet while reading the newspaper and high-fiving the other men, women have no choice but to sit on these disgusting cesspools during even the most routine waste expulsions.

That said, everybody could benefit from a toilet seat cover that provided some sort of buffer between their ass and the unwashed ass of a stranger. The question is, how much would you be willing to give up for that kind of peace of mind whilst dropping a deuce? Toilet seat cover manufacturer Toletta believes their product to be so valuable that women should be willing to kill for an opportunity to rest their posterior on the same crinkly paper you'd find at your local doctor's office:

TolettaLet's play a game: Note the small amount of blood in the sink and on her cheek and try to determine a plausible cause of death.

Since public restrooms don't usually stock Toletta themselves, there are only two ways a woman could wrap their cheeks around some of that sweet, sweet butt shield: Either you spend $3 and stash the stylish product in your purse for gastrointestinal emergencies, or you murder the rich asshole who did. Apparently, it's 50-50 whether women would rather brutally beat the shit out of a woman for her seat cover or spend $3. We've always wondered, but now we know: $3 is how much a human life is worth to a woman pooping in a magazine ad.

2

Using Suicide To Sell Shampoo

Depression and suicide: always a good analogy for problems with tangled or frizzy hair. Right? No? That's offensive, insensitive, and absurd? Well, UK beauty brand Anatomicals disagrees. They produce a shampoo for hard-to-manage hair called Peachy Head: Peach Shampoo for Suicidal Hair.

AnatomicalsAnd if your hair is going gray prematurely, look for our new product, "Tiny Coffin Dead Too Soon Hair Coloring!"

1

Using 9/11 To Sell Belgian Comedy And IT Security

The Belgian humor publication Humo ran a 9/11-themed ad in 2004, which is something so impossible it's worth mentioning again. The Belgian comedy magazine Humo RAN A 9/11-THEMED ADVERTISEMENT ONLY A FEW FUCKING YEARS AFTER 9/11.

Humo via Village VoiceFunny caption coming soon! When we're all, you know, more comfortable about it!

It's unclear when people will be comfortable making cute references to 9/11, but it sure as shit wasn't in 2004. Many, many people have tried since then, but what made Humo's ad so offensive was how they handled the shocking, world-shattering tragedy with the restraint of a toddler playing with a cup of pudding. Advertising your magazine on the strength of it being so addictive that people can't help causing era-defining tragedies is the kind of thing that would get a creative director fired in most places, but Humo was bizarrely proud of it.

And OK, Humo is a controversial humor magazine, so maybe it's not so hard to understand why they were fine with this, but they didn't have the only Belgian 9/11 ad shockingly soon after the event. IT company CoBis came out with one in 2006, likening 9/11 to hacking and malware. After all, there's not that much distance between thousands of people dying and opening a bad email attachment. Right?!

CoBisGive it a second. This is that slow-burn, subtle kind of offensively inappropriate.

Is exploiting fresh tragedies a trendy idea in the Belgian advertising community? Is the culture particularly glib about human suffering? Are the waffles and chocolate so delicious that the people have no concept of pain and loss? Maybe there's a dark, chilling undercurrent to the country we don't know about. Maybe Douglas Adams decided to make "Belgium" the rudest word in the galaxy in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy for a reason.

Greg Tuff can be found performing standup comedy in the basements of Winnipeg. Follow him at @Decaps86 if you continue to never visit. Jordan Breeding also writes for Paste Magazine, the Twitter, himself, and with a dirty, dirty spraycan in various back alleys.

If you're looking for fewer rough edges in your life, maybe try some Caffeinated Aftershave from Pacific Shaving Company.

If you loved this article and want more content like this, support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more, check out Shockingly Offensive Ads That Came Out Way Too Recently and 5 Ridiculously Offensive Ads That Somehow Got Approved.

Also follow us on Facebook. Because why not?