‘As a girl I simply accepted the fact I would be arrested for attempting to buy a Yorkie’
People are being left shocked after discovering a controversial 2002 Yorkie advert – but others have labelled it ‘genius.’
The Yorkie bar has certainly changed its image in the last decade or so, but any millennial reading this will remember that, infamously, they were never, ever to be eaten by girls.
This 2002 television advert made that very clear.
The ad shows a woman being denied a Yorkie bar after answering a series of supposedly “manly” questions, and ultimately failing to prove she was “masculine” enough for the chocolate bar.
The bizarre ad sees a woman disguise herself as a man so that she can try buy the bar that is branded as “not for girls.”
The shopkeeper then begins to interrogate her to try about stereotypically male subjects.
As part of the questioning, the shopkeeper asks: “You’re not a man are you?
“Explain the offside rule then…”
If you thought things were already a bit iffy, prepare yourself – it gets worse.
The next tests the woman must pass to ‘prove’ she’s a man include opening a jar, not being scared of a plastic spider and saying whether they prefer stockings or tights.
The Yorkie slogan in 2002 was: “Five big chunks of masculine chocolate. Yorkie… it’s not for girls.”
The ad has recently been doing the rounds on social media, with some women remembering that they genuinely used to think the chocolate bar was not to be eaten by them.
“As a girl I simply accepted the fact I would be arrested for attempting to buy a Yorkie,” one person said on TikTok.
On Facebook, another wrote: “Yep, and I remember the massive kick off. I haven’t bought a Yorkie since.”
But some reckoned the advert was just a bit of fun, and went as far as to label the Yorkie advertising team “genius.”
“Ahh back in the day when people actually laughed at jokes,” one said.
“If I could wish one type of person away it would be the ones who get p***ed off over jokes.”
Someone else added: “Never bought so many Yorkies in my life, how dare they say me, a girl, can’t have them. The advertising team were genius really, as not a lot of girls were buying them.”
Another agreed, writing: “My sisters ate more Yorkies than me, was proper genius. But so many people don’t understand the difference between a joke and sexism.”
When Nestle decided to air this advertising campaign in 2002, the marketing director at the company, Andrew Harrison, said: “Most men these days feel as if the world is changing around them and it has become less and less politically correct to have anything that is only for males.
“Yorkie feels that this is an important element of men’s happiness and is starting the reclaiming process of making a particular chocolate just for men.”
Eventually, Yorkie realised the times they were a changing, and removed the ‘It’s not for girls’ slogan and the no women sign from its packaging in 2012.
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