Pre-packaged cookies, Oi! Oi! Oi?

Every once in a while I’ll see something to remind just how old I am (and it’s not just the ever-expanding gut). Although a cliche sentiment, it’s very accurate. By way of a “for example”, just a few moments ago I caught a Chunky Chips Ahoy commercial that, of all things, referenced “Oi!” music. Yes. Oi. The commercial consists of a group of smiling punk kids (identifiable as punk by their multicolored mohaks) escorting the Chunky Chips Ahoy anthropomorphic cookie-thing down an “English” street while singing a “punky chips ahoy, oi oi oi” song. They are then corrected by a Bobby who tells them that it’s chunky, not punky.

This all seems a bit bizzare to me. First off, Oi! music is a sub-genre of punk music that got assimilated by skinheads, which is odd, because Oi! music was inherently “unity” whereas skins aren’t so fond of the whole unity concept. The question is then: why the hell would Nabisco associate itself with a music style that most people associate with skinheads and racism, even if the association is incorrect? The second question would be: since there’s probably 20 people left on the face of the earth who remember the Oi! scene, why the hell would they mine that particular genre?

Nabisco would be better served tapping into the straight-edge scene, since it seems more relevant to kids today (go figure). Of course, the current straight-edge scene only serves to make me feel even older, and what kids refer to as “hardcore” today seems like nothing but a bunch of overwrought kids with neck tattoos acting emotional (with apologies to the Dropkick Murphys and the track “Wicked Sensitive Crew”). While I know that Emo music and hardcore share a common root, the fact that over-sensitive teenagers wearing mascara, crying constantly and pouring their hearts out in their MySpace blogs sport Straight-Edge tatoos just boggles my mind. But that’s a story for another post.

Besides, it would be awful funny seeing a anthropomorphic cookie with the chocolate chips in a big X design on its sides being escorted by a bunch of moping kids in hoodies.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 26th, 2006 at 3:41pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.