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"Won't somebody think of the children!?"
Someone did - Ananova reports that a catholic college has complained about the new wrapper design for Haribo's Moaom fruit chews - the fruit on the wrapper seems to be copulating. If you have a dirty mind.

"We are shocked at the shameless presentation of sexual practices on the wrapping, which includes not only sexual intercourse but also fellatio and cunnilingus," wrote the St Blasien Jesuit College near Bonn.

(to see the wrappers read more...)

Lowe London have started something called lowe Groundwork, a sceme where 24 planners will be sent to live, shop and breathe with the punters.

Every fortnight, two Lowe planners will be 'relocated' to live in one of the areas that have the most typical population of a distinctive consumer types, from single mothers in council flats to families of four living in suburban semis, inner-city Asian families and wealthy countryfolk in rural areas.

Saw this on a Russian site and thought it is pretty funny. Picture below is a poster ad in the Moscow metro, advertising Microsoft and it's new "Now I Know" campaign they are running there.

Grafill award has just had a great year, the lines between illustration and design have blurred, the bar been raised and the only problem really is that you still can't view the winners work on their site. Read more to see some here instead.

The end of last month, Dab posted an article about a cross-dresser which offended Finns and Lebanese.

Now there's a transgender singer doing ads for menstrual pads in Asia (agency is in Taiwan, article is from a S.Korean pub, so I'm not sure where exactly the ads will air).

A beauty company is finally listening to it's customers- women. Tired of being bombarded by stick-skinny models, women have spoken out in a survey in which "Dove found 83% of women were concerned that models in beauty adverts did not actually use the products they were promoting.
Over half wanted more curvy women in adverts and 56% said they felt better about themselves when they saw adverts featuring women with figures similar to their own."

This new ad campaign, which breaks today in London, features billboards showing a curvaceous woman in white underwear and the line: "New Dove Firming. As tested on real curves."

ERK the ethical advice group have been real busy banning ads lately. The infamous Spank fashion ad and the bad body-pun ad from Pentax were both banned for passing the line of what is acceptable and clearly against the ICCs International code of advertising practice. [ .pdf here].

In a mock-hip-hop video style ad shot by music video director Dave Meyers, where the women wear plenty of shiny bling bling, the men hang out 'chillin' and hip hop provides the thumping soundtrack - the spokesperson with the tagline is L.L. Cool J who turns to the camera and says "When it starts showing up in music videos, don't let the style and flavor mess with your mind. It's still built like a Volvo."

Volvo wants the S40 to be known in the USA as the cool car, not just the safe car. Can they have it both ways? from Forbes:

"We have a car that is nimble, fast and cool," says Thomas Andersson, Volvo's executive vice president for marketing in North America. "All of a sudden, for the target audience, we've taken down the barriers to consideration. Safety can become an added value."

In what I hope is the last nail in the coffin for reality TV show Big Brother (in Sweden at least), Ladbrokes has pulled their sponsorship effective immediately this morning after a foodfight turned into assault.

Last night there was a drunken party in the Big Brother house, followed by a foodfight. When one of the women went to bed, passed out by booze around ten pm, two male contestants decided to play a practical joke on her. Apparently where they come from, smearing butter over an unconscious womans thighs and sticking a pickle in her underwear is considered funny. When the woman woke up and discovered what happened she cried uncontrollably.

Ladbrokes took this incident very seriously, Douglas Roos the CEO said: "If channel 5 doesn't report this assault to the police, we will." and "this goes against all forms of civilized behavior, moral and ethics, we can not under any circumstances continue to sponsor this show."

Big Brother said in a statement today that it wasn't a pickle, it was a pfefferoni, and that they'll show the incident again tonight. They will not eject the men involved from the show, as they "don't deem it necessary to disqualify any of the persons involved" but they also state that they "distance themselves from what happened". Not far enough to not run a rerun........

What? Didn't you say Bud? And what's more interesting, the implications from an advertising standpoint or the possibility that this too could go down in infamy?