The cherry Hint Water tastes like cherries!

Before you get to the uncanny valley you’ll find a hidden peak that might be named bizarre hill. This is where directors and production companies stand when they get a brief from a client and just let it all hang out, while still bringing us back to the product. 

Two men, having finished a pie-eating contest, say that Hint Water tastes more like real fruit than the desserts. In order to check that this is indeed the truth, the man who ate the cherry pie licks the face of the man who ate the blackberry pie then takes a swig of the product, declaring “delicious!” There are so many obvious ways this could go wrong, but the interaction is played (literally) straight, and there’s no presence of an off-color joke at all. The interaction is just bizarre, and nothing more is made of it. 

What makes the ad successful is the fact that the product is very obviously placed and referred to throughout the short. It’s just the presentation that goes hilariously off the rails. In Pie Eating Contest, as in all the shorts for this campaign, director Peter Martin never draws our focus away from the product for long. It’s the additions of awkwardly comfortable situations and memorable actors that make this spot strangely entertaining.