Remember Punchy from last post?

7-Up has this banned update:

Honestly, she’s just as big a jerk as Punchy, but there are a few critical differences here:

• Set up
• Predictability
• Consequence
• Gender

The set-up appears to be an entirely different commercial — both subjects are attractive and it initially appears to be a “sex sell”. In contrast, Punchy is a cartoon character in which mischief and violence is already expected.

When she delivers the punchline headline, it’s going to catch most people off-guard and far more likely to deliver a laugh, compared to Punchy’s obvious upcoming pun.

A critical difference between the 7-Up commercial and the early Hawaiian Punch commercials as well is the fact that after the action, the guy is nowhere to be found.  Opie the tourist on the other hand, is left visibly lying in a heap as Punchy skips away.  That way there’s a lot less time to focus on the consequences of the violence.  Removing that aspect makes it a lot easier to laugh.

Finally, there’s the gender.  Needless to say, there’s no way Punchy would be allowed win a fight against the 7-Up girl.  Not today, and hopefully not even in his day.  (I don’t think there’s been any commercial where Punchy ever hit a woman, although I’ve already shown you he’d do it if given the opportunity)

As always, now that it’s on the web, 7-Up will never be able to remove it.

The questions for this post are:

• Would Punch-Style commercials be acceptable today as long as Punchy was female?
• Should funny cartoon-style violence be acceptable for use in advertising on TV, the Internet, neither or both?

As usual, the questions link to a (2-question) Survey Monky survey, the results of which I’ll post as an edit to this entry.