Coppertone Bikini Girls

Mike Grist Ads / Signs, Japan 19 Comments

Coppertone have gone nuts recently in Shibuya station, plastering at least the Yamanote line north-bound platform with pictures of bikini-clad women (and little girls) with a dog biting their butts. When I first saw this I did a double-take, turned the other way, saw a similar ad where a little girl was getting her butt bit, and started to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t just a bit too weird for its own good.

Odd.

Of course they are replicating the Coppertone logo, a little girl getting her butt bit by a dog, but isn’t that an odd logo to have anyway? What is the company saying about it’s product?

Despite that oddness, I found myself getting to like the campaign for its ‘out-there’ boldness. It certainly stands out- the dog is a gimmick that makes the brand unique, so all they have to do to keep it interesting is keep varying the models- like so:

This one is waiting to be knighted by the Queen, and is pretending the dog isn’t there (it’s quite unseemly).

This one is saying- “Ha ha ha, good joke, but seriously guys..”

This one is a no-good hippy. Put some shoes on, hippy!

This one is showing us what Marilyn Monroe kept underneath her dress.

Here’s another little girl- she looks most like the logo. I guess she knows she did something naughty, and now Satan has sent a demon-dog to punish her. I bet she left the lid off the cookie jar.

There a whole bunch of other models, including a guy dressed as a girl, and a girl with a manga face mask on (yes, weird). You can peruse them all at the Coppertone site here. There are a lot!

TOKYO

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Comments 19

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  2. Well how the famous have fallen. Coppertone was always the BIG NAME in tanning stuff when I was growing up in the USA in the 50’s and 60’s…so this is quite beyond the pale. There would be no end of complaints about these ads over here in London. Are there any with fellas worrying about their tan or their backside???? I bet not.

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  4. @Becky

    Coppertone was still the big name in tanning products when I was growing up in the U.S. in the 70’s. Its name was synonymous with sunblock.

    Only as I’ve gotten older and wiser have I switched to more natural brands of sunblock.

    P.S. do you have a website? I swear I commented on one of your photos that was of the water (ocean?) meeting some pebbles.

  5. Pingback: Travellers’ Tales - The FEER Blog » Blog Archive » A Dog-Bites-Girl Ad

  6. What I’m wondering is how they got the dog to bite every girl’s butt the same way. What exactly did the put in the girls’ bikinis? Bacon?
    Maybe best not to pursue that train of thought….

  7. Post
    Author

    Curt- Hayup!

    Jamaipanese- cheers.

    Mom- There are some pictures of a guy, but he’s dressed as a girl and in there for humor. Complaints- yes, I can imagine- they were running through my head as I looked at the ads for the first time. But now- well, I think it was a bad campaign, but I still admire its brashness and stab at retro-innocent butt-biting.

    Jason- that’s my Dad’s website you’re talking about.

    the Can- I think the dogs were tranquilized, or maybe tasered, before they were coaxed into position.

  8. man, that is so messed up! they missed the point of the original add entirely. it had nothing to do with the dog “biting”. the dog is only tugging the suit down, showing the WHITENESS of the skin not tanned by the product, see? and the light-skinned models in the Japanese adds makes it even more pointless-they should be darkly-tanned.

  9. Post
    Author

    Timo- I had no idea that was the purpose of the ad- thanks for setting it straight. Now the ads just seem an order of magnitude more ludicrous than they did before. I guess the ad agency deemed the ‘showing white skin’ purpose as irrelevant, and showing young women in bikinis in compromising positions as tantamount.

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