What is it about the allure of Christmas gloves that has retailers frothing at the mouth this year? Their amazing ability to keep hands warm? Or, more likely, is it their worrying anthropomorphological potential?
First up was M&S, which reincarnated footballing magnates Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney as cute little festive mittens; hot on its heels (or perhaps its palms) comes Morrisons, which has taken the slightly less glamorous route of animating sentient oven gloves.
The ad, which has no words, follows these tattered gloves as they watch Christmas dinner being prepared in households across the UK, from 6.30am (shudder) all the way through to the dishing up later in the afternoon.
Is there an obligatory Eighties synth track? Yep – this time around, it’s Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now. Thank goodness they haven’t messed with the original. The only messing around is done visually, via the choir of oven glove sock puppets delivering the tune to us with gusto.
They’re everywhere, a benign infestation of little critters: hanging off oven doors, popping out of bread bins and watching the turkey roast while their human overlords potter around, completely oblivious to what’s going on.
I’m particularly fond of the glove that looks like a black cat, complete with plastic googly eyes that surely wouldn’t last a minute against hot metal - there’s even a glove sitting in the fridge surrounded by dry ice, for god’s sake.
It’s a far more entertaining advert than last years’ offering, which starred the dreaded Farmer Christmas – this time around, FC is thankfully nowhere in sight, and neither are his army of Morrisons store workers, ready to explain why their mince pies are the best in the business.
And the sight of oven gloves just lying around, doing their thing like a deranged Muppets raised a few chuckles the first time I watched. But after a while the flapping mouths stop being funny and start to evoke gasping fish instead; and much like the fridged glove, I ended up being left a bit cold.
