Be a woman, take it like a man.

[venta]

A while back I noticed posters advertising a "protein shake" called, I think, Upbeat and made a note to try it. I figured it was a potentially interesting snack-concept for days when I want to go straight from work to, say, a yoga class without keeling over. (Lots of other interesting snack-concepts are also available but hey, I quite like milkshake).

This morning, outside Ealing Broadway station, there were gentlemen in leather jackets handing out free samples of a chocolate "40% higher protein" milkshake called Wing-Co. Obviously protein shakes are the new Thing. Wing-Co has a blocky cartoon of a WWII-era pilot (his moustache dripping chocolate milk) on the bottle, and small planes whizzing past the nutritional information.

It's pretty nice, actually. Chocolate milkshake is very variable and often has a nasty, grainy texture but I enjoyed this one. Whether it can actually make good on its promise to "shoot down hunger, fast" remains to be seen. But I could imagine buying it again.

Except...

As the free-samplers were dishing out the bottles this morning, they said "Man up with Wing-Co!" to everyone they handed one to. According to the info box on the label, "WING-CO IS PROPER MAN FUEL". "DON'T BE A GIRL," it further elaborates, "SHAKE IT UP AND DRINK IT NOW!"

Oh. Good.

The info box is, of course, designed to look like a plate which has been screwed onto the bottle. Because, y'know, screws are very manly (they look like slotted-head countersunk woodscrews to me).

Think I'll try out Upbeat after all. In fact, Wing-Co has inspired me to compare the two, and Upbeat has real fruit in it, and more protein, and is made entirely from British milk.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

I just ran past a poster on a bus-stop (I mean I was out running, not that the poster scared me) and it had a guy carrying a cow on his shoulders, and the slogan was something like "A milkshake for men, with added man". At a very quick glance, it seemed so completely over-the-top and pisstakey that I actually wouldn't have minded it as part of an ad-campaign. If only the rest of the campaign weren't so rubbish and so lazily thought-up.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Added...man-cow...somebody behind that doesn't want to think about where milk comes from.

[shermarama]

I had a bit of a funny moment when I started in my current job, where everyone refers to cows as 'she' all the time, and I felt myself wanting to challenge their sexist assumptions... And then thought, oh. Yeah. You can actually call all the dairy cows 'she', can't you?

[venta.livejournal.com]

There was the weird case of the cartoon cow that used to advertise Boddington's beer, which was clearly intended to be male but still had udders. Although Wikipedia describes the cow as "a transgender playboy", so maybe I'm being too simplistic.