I most definitely did! I remember the times at the grocery store, when I tried to sneak a Chupa Chups lolli onto the belt for the cashier to scan as we checked out, but was most often discovered and immediately removed. Nonetheless, I still got a treat once in a while, and it was pure delight!

So a couple of days back, a friend of mine showed me a picture of a Chupa Chups advertisement on a Singapore public bus, which totally amused her and she just had to capture it.

Chupa Chups: “The Pleasure Of Sucking”

Talk about bad advertising slogans. What message is Chupa Chups sending out again? Something erotic or that the candy is awful and terrible? So I did a google search hoping to find out who actually handles their advertising campaigns. Here’s a summary:

2006: Campaign launched in Spain and the original in Spanish is “El placer de chupar”. Click here to view the ad for the campaign. So ‘placer’ means ‘pleasure’ and ‘chupar’ means ‘to absorb’.
2007: Ad campaign “The Pleasure of Sucking” continues worldwide.
May 2008: BBH Asia Pacific won the global Chupa Chups account.
September 2008: A blogger spotted a Singapore public bus with an ad celebrating Chupa Chups 50th anniversary with a hard to miss tagline: “Making Sucking Pleasurable Since 1958″ and even had a picture of a little girl. BBH launches global ‘Life Less Serious’ campaign, featuring Chuck. View ads here.
October 2009: “The Pleasure of Sucking” ad continues in Singapore.

Chupa Chups advocate the benefits of sucking. They actually talk about what’s so good about sucking on a Chupa Chups lollipop. You can read the 4 benefits here.

Brand slogans and the mind. This slogan was not well received by most for the alternate provacative meaning. Not forgetting that probably they did not pay close attention to cultural differences. But we can agree that the slogan definitely left an impression, and got many people talking.

On this note, with BBH’s global ‘Life Less Serious’ campaign, shouldn’t they advise Chupa Chups to maybe phase out “The Pleasure of Sucking”? They certainly don’t want people who doesn’t know the history of this, to think they initiated it.

Or, maybe… life less serious also suggests suck it up.