Back in 1995, a small advertising firm in Sydney produced this ad to reintroduce the Australian market to the curvy Coke bottle. Let the bears (and, I guess, by extension, Toblerone) pay the bear tax. This pro-bear agenda is the reason I have $5 deducted out of my paychecks to pay a bear tax. 4 | Toblerone – but did you see the dancing bear?
So this was either accidental on Pepsi’s part, or a case of refined subtlety. The point: You know you went too subtle with your subliminal advertising when two boys on the verge of adolescence can’t really find your hidden sex message. I was a party to both of those events that summer.)Īnyway, my friend Matt had a bunch of the cans at his house, so I told him about this rumor and we spent an entire afternoon trying to configure the cans to spell “sex.” We finally did arrive at the arrangement you can see on the right side of the graphic above and agreed that was “probably” it. If we wanted to see breasts we had to either steal a copy of someone’s dad’s Penthouse or hope that we’d see a woman breastfeeding at the public pool. I’d just finished fifth grade and I was at a summer camp at a really amazing place in Cleveland called Cain Park, and one of the “bad” kids told me that there were new Pepsi cans out that spelled out “S-E-X.” Of course, when you’re 10, “sex” is such a taboo word that only the bad kids would talk about it. I remember when Pepsi introduced these cans in the summer of 1990. It’s more of a “I bet there’s a lost book of the New Testament where Jesus turned sand into low-quality ground beef” thing.) 3 | Pepsi – funky cans of sex? 2 | Jack in the Box – the Jesus fish?īecause only Jesus would be able to figure out a way to sell two tacos for 99 cents and still make a profit. (It’s based off of a 15th century drawing of an ancient Greek two-tailed mermaid siren.) Yes, one of the most ubiquitous logos in world is actually showing a mermaid spreading her fish legs and holding them by those… what do you call ’em? Oh, feet. I put together the graphic above using the original Starbucks logo - to show its real origins. Here are 11 food ads, logos and packages that contain hidden, subliminal or secret messages - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. Not only did it make me think that Zack Morris is a blonde Tom Cruise, but it also made me want to write this list. I was listening to my old Beau Revere tape yesterday. Hidden secrets from Starbucks, Pepsi, Burger King and more.