Skittles, makers of the delicious, fruity candy and known for their wacky ads have taken Mother’s Day to a place where it, quite frankly, should never go. Abandoning the tried and true, sentimental, beautiful, chocolates and flowers approach we’re so used to seeing from Hallmark and basically every other company at this time of the year, Skittles have taken it down a notch or two.
It starts out rather sweetly; an older mother and her adult son sitting side my side on a couch, and as the mother eats Skittles, the son is guessing the flavours. Kind of sweet, right?
That is, until the camera pans out and we are confronted with possibly the most disturbing thing ever to appear on a television commercial for sweets – or anything, for that matter.
What we see is the adult son’s shirt hoisted up, and from his navel protruding a thick, pulsing, and gurgling umbilical cord, connected to his elderly mother! Yes, as she’s eating the Skittles, he is also “eating the Skittles”, and it’s extremely uncomfortable and revolting to watch. The son says, “I love eating Skittles every time you eat Skittles”, and mum replies, “I love you eating Skittles every time I eat Skittles.”
Bizarrely, the ad ends with the son saying, “I miss dad”, leading us to speculate on what happened to the dad (presumably, he left because of the disturbing closeness of this pair).
It’s just about enough to put you off eating Skittles for life, which I’m not sure is the result the company is after.
But if the aim was to get people talking about the brand, they’ve succeeded. Watch the entire commercial below.
This article originally appeared on Starts At 60.
