Some time ago i submitted an article to the Guardian Guide Hard Sell, although it wasn't used it did get some positive feedback. Here is the article on the Petits Filous advert. You know the one, and if you don't it's this one.
Arm Wrestling has long been the playground barometer for strength, popularity, and a great way of making friends. It’s a challenge, a test of muscular power. It’s all about the bicep. It was taken very seriously when I was at school. Dinner hour became arm wrestling club. The first rule of arm wrestling club is you don’t talk about arm wrestling club. If you did the teachers and playground supervisors would find out and put an end to arm wrestling club.
After the end of the school day, Eye of the Tiger would be on the ghetto-blaster and the dumb bells would be out, a bar would be installed across your bedroom door to do chin ups. No one seemed to want to swallow the pint of raw egg though. Arm Wrestling club was important but not that important, plus it was all about building up the muscles in your arm, how could raw egg help that?
What we never thought of doing was eating Petits Filous , which apparently has calcium to help make your bones grow stronger. This helps the girl in the advert win back her friends’ marbles. Surely this would obliterate his self esteem, to be beaten by a girl at arm wrestling would mean the end of your world and there would be no point in ever showing your face again.
But it’s all based on a lie. It wouldn’t matter if she’d have eaten her Petits Filous, the calcium might help your bones, but you need muscles to win at arm wrestling. She would have lost, you’d have never got your marbles back and people would have mocked you for making a girl fight your battles. That’s the real world, the world which arm wrestling club prepared me for.
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