Christmas is the only holiday with its own set of nostalgic rules which every American must follow. For example, department stores will receive boos if they put up one string of tinsel before November, the Macy’s parade must be held on Thanksgiving Day despite rain or alien invasion, and it isn’t the holiday season until certain legacy commercials appear on television.
During Thanksgiving weekend, I saw a perennial favorite appear; the Hershey’s Kisses ad featuring a choir of the red and green confections as finely tuned bells playing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” The third red Kiss in the second row of the ten Kisses (with a silver Kiss choral director) wears itself out with the final extended note, swiping its tag like a hand across its pointy “brow” with a “whew” at the end. It’s cute, and a classic.
In 2020, somebody in the marketing department at Hershey decided to bring out a second version of the commercial. As the Kisses begin the tune, a child’s hand appears and snatches a Kiss away. And not just any Kiss, either. The darling snatches up the third red Kiss just seconds into the performance! And we then see the owner of the hand–a little girl and who we assume is her father–putting Kisses into the tops of thumb print cookies.
Like Lil’ Abner’s friends the Schmoos, whose goal in life is to be eaten, we understand that Kisses are eaten as is or baked into other treats, but the bells are also replaced in the new version by a light jazzy version of the song. Some find the overall effect jarring.
Within hours, somebody posted the original ad on social media, and the protests exploded. It seems a lot of people do not like Hershey toying with the good old ad. There have even been video parodies online of the terrified Kisses as they are picked off by the kid one by one as they scream in terror, and armchair commentary from somebody hoping they get to see the original ad on TV but must endure the new one, to their vocal discontent.
Not many things divide the online community to such extremes as when somebody is messing with something familiar. Movie remakes undergo the same criticism, along with renaming sports teams and trying to introduce new soda concoctions.
We are used to commercials which tout all sorts of crazy gadgets with the tag, “makes a great Christmas gift,” or “order now for holiday delivery.” Watching those Kiss bells toll out a simple tune is an ASMR tradition which, as per popular vote, can’t be toyed with (to coin a phrase), and it doesn’t say to buy the bright packages at all. But we do, in massive amounts.
I haven’t seen the newer version on television this year, but I also am reminded of other long-gone ads such as the Norelco shaver which featured a Santa gliding through snowy hills atop an electric razor, and the company dropped the R to make the name NOELCO instead. They didn’t change a thing. That’s smart. We won’t see those ads anymore, because No(r)elco was bought out by the Phillips company (the folks who sell electric toothbrushes). Unless the marketing department wants to put their new logo at the end of the old commercial, which has been done successfully in the past by others, that ad is lost to history or old video clips.
However, the electric razors of today are not ergonomic mouse-like devices anymore, so children today would not know what they were looking at. They might ask, “Daddy, why is Santa riding a mouse with circley things on them?”
A third classic commercial does change every year, and nobody minds: the Hess toy truck ad is filmed sometime in summer, and features kids in winter gear hoisting a new version of an old classic toy to the tune of “My Boyfriend’s Back.” This is the 60th anniversary of the toy. Hess gas stations were bought out and renamed Marathon, but the trucks (or variant transports) are still sold. Batteries included.
Whew!
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