Today’s UWTV entry is about a surreal advert for breakfast cereal that was on UK TV in the 90s. From my recollection it was mid-to-late 90s, I think some time between 1994-98, but I can’t recall the exact year. Nor do I recall what cereal it was for but I’m fairly sure it was an ‘obscure’ cereal as opposed to the more well-known ones like Corn Flakes, All-Bran, Shredded Wheat etc. This advert was rather weird and (to me at least) perhaps unintentionally disturbing, so here goes…
The advert featured a comedic woman who was rather bumbling and silly, in a kitchen/dining room making a bowl of breakfast cereal for herself. (From memory the lady had quite long, thick hair, I think either blonde or possibly a reddish colour.) From my recollection there was a male voiceover and the lady didn’t say anything, it was more like a silent comedy thing, with her making the bowl of cereal. At the end of the advert, the lady sat down at the table to eat the cereal – and then, the room turned itself upside down, and the woman screamed as she and everything in the room fell crashing to the ‘floor’ (i.e. the ceiling that was now the floor). The advert ended with a shot of the cereal packet landing upright in front of the camera, and I think a male voiceover advertizing the cereal.
I recall seeing this advert quite a few times; I think it ran fairly regularly over a short period of time, but I cannot recall the exact year. Personally this advert always bugged me, because although it was obviously meant to be silly and comedic, it looked like a pretty nasty accident the woman was subjected to at the end, and what made it seem particularly unpleasant was the woman’s scream – if she’d let out a comical, light-hearted scream it probably would not have bugged me so much, but as she fell to the ‘floor/ceiling’, the woman let out a proper shrill, terrified scream that would rival that of Janet Leigh in Psycho – no way could I see this advert as being funny at all!
My search for this advert has brought me, naturally, to the Cereals & Other Ads channel on YouTube; I emailed the channel’s owner, but unfortunately he is not familiar with this advert, despite being a big collector of UK breakfast cereal commercials. If the advert managed to elude him I wonder if it may have been a regional advert rather than a national one (I live in the Northwest).
Of course there are hundreds if not thousands of commercial breaks from the 90s on YouTube, so I’m hoping this advert may be on one of them somewhere, but if so I have yet to come across it.
So it seems this elusive advert is deserving of a UWTV entry – does anyone recall this advert at all, know what it was for or know where we can find it? If so, please comment here or drop us an email!
UPDATE 30/03/23 – Thanks to one of our Twitter followers, @Carrigpudding, it seems this UWTV item has been found!
The advert is for Shredded Wheat, and can be viewed at the end of this ad break, at 3:20:
So it seems the advert was from earlier than believed, as this ad break is from November 1988. It’s possible the ad may have been repeated in the 90s, or it could just be a classic case of memory being unreliable. It’s also possible that a different ad reused the same idea in the 90s, but I see no real reason this particular advert isn’t the one I remembered.
And it’s yet another instance of childhood memory making an ad out to be more disturbing than it really was – as you can see from the video, the woman’s scream at the end is pretty comedic after all, and definitely not the ‘nasty accident’ I perceived it as when seeing it at a very young age!
Huge thanks to @Carrigpudding on Twitter for solving this mystery for us, and should anyone have any further info on similar adverts, don’t hesitate to contact us via the comments, Twitter or email!
Unidentified Weird TV 