Classic TV ads that kept it human Part 3 – Liquorice Allsorts

Was I the only ten year old terrified of the demonic ‘One too many and you might turn Bertie’ adverts that graced our screens in the late eighties / early nineties courtesy of Liquorice Allsorts?

I wasn’t the biggest fan of liquorice as a child anyway but my Great Grandmother Muriel a type 1 diabetic always hid a packet underneath her blanket and would sneak them out when she thought nobody was watching.

Now Muriel should have been more worried about ‘One too many and you might fall into a diabetic coma’ but she used to love bribing her Great Grandchildren not to tell by offering us one of our favourite allsorts in exchange for sealed lips. It was also a great excuse whenever she got caught to announce innocently ‘but I bought them for the boys’ at which point we would all nod in agreement our teeth stuck together with sinful sweeties.

As an adult I now realise that the Bertie Bassett adverts were homage to the sci-fi film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But at the time because of the link to doing something so sneaky behind my parents back with Great Granny Muriel I was genuinely paranoid that some sort of liquorice based transmutation would happen to me as punishment.

To remedy this concern I decided that my favourite liquorice allsorts were in fact the ones that made up Bertie’s head, namely the pink coconut face and blue bead jelly hat. By effectively decapitating Mr Bassett every time I took one I reasoned that it negated the chance of the world descending into lollypop lady Bassett head madness like some sort of twilight zone nightmare come real.

Yes I was a child with an overactive imagination but I felt guilt very strongly in the strict world of right and wrong as bestowed on me by grown-ups. More than this though I think now as an adult that Bassett’s tapped into something particularly human with these adverts that affects everyone at one time or another – fear.

Children especially feel fear quite deeply and Liquorice always appeared a bit of a grown up sweet to me. A bit sour and strong it was probably because the blue and pink ones had no liquorice in them that I actually liked them. It was almost as if the adverts were serving as a warning to children everywhere ‘these are adult sweets – not for the likes of you sunshine’. It was the human emotion of fear linked to the adverts and fear of getting a smack for being naughty and endangering my Great Grandmothers life that multiplied that emotion.

Muriel lived to a ripe old age in any case and we felt slightly vindicated years later when my Nan discovered she had a black market agreement with the local corner shopkeeper for biscuits and the ice-cream van driver for 99’s with a flake. She had been a dab hand at confection based bribery for years.

Looking back at the top three adverts that had an effect on me as a child it’s striking to note that they all have one thing in common, they all brought out something uniquely human in my nature that has stayed with me even to this day and they all link into the people who brought me up.

My Mother cared a great deal about us eating well so her concern around Sugar Puffs was only a motherly worry. My Nan used to love making the house nice when we visited and ran around cooking, Shake n Vacing and entertaining like a whirling dervish to make sure everyone was happy. As for my Great Grandmother, well there’s nothing more satisfying than being the adult that gets to indulge in sweets and be mischievous with children rather than the authoritarian.

So altogether the one thing that links all these adverts that mean a lot to me is the human emotion of love. That might sound cheesy to some people reading this but the brands we buy everyday enter our homes and the lives of all the people around us. That’s why some brands are firmly established in love and will never leave us.

So looking at the Bertie Bassett advert below now it’s not so much with fear but a wry smile at the thought of magnificent Muriel and her insatiable sweet tooth.