"Break Free From Chickensanity"

1 September 2026

60s

Dryly horrific.

Is there a greater culinary crime than dry chicken? Not according to this Canadian ad for Aquamar, a collection of sauces which can be used to zhuzh up your cooking. Horror movie tropes are used throughout as a family tackles the sheer unbridled terror of chicken breasts that look like as though they have been boiled for an hour... indeed, these meals don't look as though anything could save them so it's a pretty bold claim.

The use of chickens to terrorise them has made DAVID realise that a number of recent ads seem to be tapping into a primeval fear of these flightless dinosaur descendents, including KFC's UK advertising where disrespect for the chicken can lead to all kinds of peril and an ad for Corn Flakes that had a giant rooster patrolling the city streets like a feathered Godzilla.

Directing team tnt are boldly unconcerned about putting people off eating in general as they depict the kind of meal and drab settings that merit a trigger warning for anyone who grew up in the 1970s, the decade that taste forgot.

The spot brilliantly makes the case for the advertised product, so much so that we wouldn't recommend adorning your fridge with the stuff unless you are the person in your household that does the cooking... as, if you're not, that person might take exception to the suggestion that their cooking needs it!

Canada

Sauces