"Boneless Bites of Soul"

20 February 2025

90s

Danger bone.

Cartilogenophobia—a fear of bones—is rampant in director Greg Gray's latest commercial for South African fast-food restaurant Chicken Licken. The cast hates them: so much so that everyone's signed up for group therapy in a local gym hall. Bones of all shapes and sizes, natural or manmade, scare the absolute shit out of them… and that's good news for viewers.

How Gray 'tortures' his cast is superb: there's the car park attendant who abandons his post because of cartoon skeletons on the telly; the high school student who faints in a museum packed to the rafters with animal skeletons; and the mechanic, Jono, whose dog digs up a bone with painful results. Our favourite has to be the woman frightened by a BoneyM record.

It's an awful idea therefore to produce a bag of fried chicken when everyone's nerves are shot (like in the museum, the student's water bottle clatters to the ground and rolls away when she faints). Chicken Licken's Soul Bites, however, are boneless to the core, so even cartilogenophobes are invited to dinner. Hungry, funny work from Gray and his crew.

South Africa

Fast Food Restaurants