Cadbury ad shows gay couple enjoying a creamy surprise
Chocolate company's Creme Egg commercial has drawn backlash from homophobes
A new commercial from British chocolate manufacturer Cadbury has gone viral on social media for showing a gay couple sharing an intimate moment with a creamy ending.
Touting the company’s Creme Egg — a thick, egg-shaped chocolate shell with a gooey center resembling a yolk — the commercial celebrates the confection’s “Golden Goobilee,” after it was rebranded in 1971.
To celebrate “five delicious decades,” the commercial shows various ways Brits enjoy their Eggs, including licking, dipping, and baking.
But the most notable scene features the “sharers,” a gay couple who bite into their Creme Egg with an intimate shared kiss.
In an even sweeter twist, the couple is played by real-life gay couple Callum Sterling and Dale K. Moran, Attitude reports.
The dance they share before enjoying their Creme Egg is a reference to the men’s professions. Both are choreographers, with Moran having worked for RuPaul’s Drag Race UK and Stirling having danced with Demi Lovato and Rita Ora.
Unfortunately, because we can’t have anything nice anymore, while the commercial has been celebrated for showcasing a gay couple it has also drawn the ire of homophobes, who are apparently concerned that showing gay people eating chocolate will “confuse” children.
“I am not Homophobic but I just think the New Cadbury Egg advert…is totally unnecessary,” one Twitter user ranted. “Showing two men passionately enjoying a Cream egg that Children love to eat will only confuse children as such a young age. Why?”
““Dear @CadburyUK, just to let you know that your Creme Egg advert featuring gay men is wholly inappropriate,” another wrote. “I do not believe that you would do this with a heterosexual couple, but it seems homosexuality has to be promoted far more explicitly. Go woke, go broke. An ex-customer.”
One user seemed particularly fixated on the “white filling” between the two men’s mouths.
“Take a look at that photo,” he wrote. “Theres [sic] nothing more disgusting than seeing a kiss over a creme eggm [sic] it looks weird and could be misinterpreted due to the white filling. Not only that, the main focus sorta shifts towards the two gay men rather than the product itself.”
However, others noted that far more explicit chocolate commercials have been filmed with straight couples, including Cadbury’s own Flake chocolate.
“People have had sex with chocolate since advertising began,” comedian Shappi Khorsandi wrote. “In my childhood it was a woman alone on a boat sucking off a flake. It did not confuse me. I did not grow up thinking I had to marry a boat.”
One particular commercial from the early ’90s which featured a woman in the bath really enjoying her Flake. (Watch it here.)
As BBC journalist Jonathan Holmes noted, he “grew up watching this on TV and still turned out gay as the day is long. Pretty sure a Creme Egg advert isn’t gonna affect kids.”
Last month, Ritz Crackers faced boycott threats after airing an ad featuring a holiday commercial featuring LGBTQ people.
The American Family Association, which has a long history of anti-LGBTQ actions and has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, took issue with Ritz’s “Where There’s Love, There’s Family” ad.
Ritz collaborated with the “It Gets Better” project on the ad, which asked people to rethink their definitions of family and featured an LGBTQ couple heading to a family gathering, one of whom is gender non-conforming.
And in October, conservative outrage group One Million Moms, an offshoot of the AFA, demanded a boycott of Oreo after the company launched a limited edition rainbow cookie with a heartwarming commercial featuring a lesbian couple.
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