Saying A Mouthful

Here in the UK we have a range of ice creams made by Wall's called Magnum. There are many flavours, and they are all freakin' delicious. However, I have one problem with them.

Their commercials.

Because Wall's seems to be under the impression that the best way to sell ice creams to people is to try to convince them that the outer layer of chocolate on each Magnum is so thick that the simple act of biting into one will produce a sound not unlike breaking rocks. With your teeth. An almost clip-cloppy coconut sound combined with a crunch.



And I have eaten many a Magnum. So I can tell you from personal experience that biting into a Magnum scarcely makes a sound. So that's problem number one.

Problem number two is that it simply does my head in  to think that anyone would hear that awful sound and think to themselves, "Wow, I sure could use an ice cream about now." That anybody on Earth would find that sound attractive or even vaguely pleasant just about defeats me. And EVERY Magnum commercial has that sound in it.

I don't think I'm alone when I say that I DON'T LIKE MOUTH NOISES. The only ones I have no issue with are my own. Anybody makes a loud chewing or slurping sound near me, I don't say anything but I secretly want to hurt them.

My first wife, bless her, was fond of iced mochas. When I procured an espresso maker (no, not a Keurig or a Tassimo or a George Clooney machine - this was in the mid-90's, We had to buy the beans whole, grind them ourselves, put it in the machine, fill up the water reservoir and stand there and watch it while it did its thing so we could turn on the steaming wand at the right moment and actually make OUR OWN FRIGGIN' COFFEE, not like today where you just haphazardly bung a little plastic doo-dah in the top and Hey Presto! Voluto! No, times were 'ard back then. Very passable, this Chateau de Chassily) she would have me make these giant iced mochas in massive cups saved from getting fast food from Taco Bell or similar, or the humongous insulated cups they give you in hospitals from which to sip your iced water, and she would make them last all day. We worked together from home at this point. Eventually there would come a point at which she would run out of liquid to consume and start chewing the ice cubes. Loudly. One at a time. And as nice a person as she is, I seriously wanted to smack her upside the head whenever she did this. Which was a lot. Thankfully, I restrained myself.

That was when my young son (now a big chap of 24) developed a liking for hard candies. He'd crunch to his heart's content on boiled sweets and gobstoppers with all the abandon he could muster. I swear he installed a miniature marshall stack of amps in his mouth somewhere. Imagine Robert Plant with banks and banks of enormous amps behind him, confidently striding god-like up to the mic, popping a Nuttall's Mintoe in his cakehole and chewing like billy-oh. Behind him is Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, each wrestling with a Mint Imperial, and in the back, the ghost of John "Bonzo" Bonham sits, sticks in hand, ready to kick in with a primal beat, grinding away on a handful of Polos.

Aaaaargh.

I get a similar effect from commercials for Poli-Grip or Fixodent. In order to prove how well this goopy shit sticks your false teeth to your mouth, they always show some idiot biting into an apple. Loudly. They've been doing it since the 60's at least.

And here, for my money, is the worst offender. It makes me want to cut my ears off and set fire to them in the hopes that the pain will distract me from the noise. It probably wouldn't, though.