Trix Wisdom

Now for a teasing, fruity version of…

YOU SUCK!!!!

Something I can say for sure that has irked me for pretty much my entire life are Trix cereal commercials. You know, you’ve got a bunch of kids enjoying Trix and the rabbit wants some, but he is denied time after time because of the classic retch-inducing line: “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!”

So ever since I was a tiny little kid and on through to today, on the rare occasion I still watch anything early enough in the day for a Trix ad to come on, I’ve watched that poor animated rabbit suffer the jeers and taunts of the animated people refusing him a cereal he has desperately wanted. He’s had to resort to outright stealing to entering contests on the quick to disguises to whatever else, all of which could be avoided if the kids would learn to fucking share. I mean, it’s kids these ads are aimed for. But what does it teach them? Entitlement based on superficial factors. Bigotry. Selfishness. Arrogance.

Interestingly enough, they treat that rabbit exactly the same way adults treat them. Adults treat kids like inferiors based only on age, expressing the very bigotry and selfishness the animated kids show towards the Trix rabbit. So, like all abused children, they act out what’s done to them on a being different from them.

Or do they?

In all these commercials packed with more anti-rabbit than the Sigma-Aldrich catalog, I can recall one time the rabbit did get the Trix. I was in third grade, I think. The ad they were running had the rabbit disguise himself as a kid and enter a bike race or something, where the prize was a bowl of Trix. So the rabbit entered the race and won, and just as he was about to be given the Trix, as always happens, his disguise fell off and everyone saw he was the rabbit. The two judges then got into an argument. One refused to give him the Trix based entirely on, you guessed it, “Trix are for kids”. The other wanted to give him the Trix because he’d won the race. The ad ended in a sort of introduction to a contest where the verdict would be up to the kids. So Trix boxes then carried info about this contest where you could submit a piece of the box saying YES or NO to whether the rabbit should get the Trix.

After a little while, they finally played the ad revealing the answer, whether the kids wanted the rabbit to win the Trix or not.

The kids said YES.

So the ecstatic rabbit was finally able to have some Trix after so long, and he brightened up his life.

Sure enough, this passed, and things went back to their usual “silly rabbit” routine, with the animated kids treating the rabbit like shit because he’s not “one of them”.

But didn’t the kids like just say they wanted the rabbit to have the Trix? Well, yeah, they did. Real kids did anyway! Not the mean animated ones. The animated kids with their continual cruelty and mockery of that poor rabbit sure do make kids out to be nasty.

Except it was real kids who wanted the rabbit to have the Trix, who were sick of seeing him treated so unfairly all the time, who believed in sharing regardless of whether or not he’s the right type of person. Real kids, and not the animated kids who are created by adults who work in advertising and think they know a damn thing about what kids want.

And we see yet another finger reaching from the high heavens of adulthood to point at the lowly bad little kids, and painting them to be oppressive, unfair, and cliquey. When, as we saw from the contest (true, assuming the contest was in any way legit), kids are no such way. The kids are the fair ones, and the kids are the ones responsible for the one time the rabbit was given what he wanted, amid the endless sea of adult-animated children treating the rabbit like shit.

So adults are creating kid characters in the Trix ads to treat the animated rabbit exactly how they treat them, teaching unsuspecting young kids that this is the proper way to be, bigoted and arrogant, or at least telling them that’s what they are. Even when they prove they aren’t. Even though almost every single other kid I talked to back when I was in elementary school shared my view that the Trix ads were infuriating, that the Trix rabbit is treated so callously all the time. I mean, damn, at least in Lucky Charms ads there was still some degree of sharing.

When so many kids hate the ads, shouldn’t that be some indication that it’s a poor marketing strategy that you seem stuck on for like forty friggin’ years?! Oh, right, almost forgot, they’re kids so you don’t give a crap. Silly kids, respect is for adults! Bastards.

On a related note, Trix sucks. Froot Loops ftw.