Saturday, May 23, 2009

Fidolatry


In the last “Olfactorama,” I wrote about artist Francesco Vezzoli’s installation concerning the launch of a fake perfume, “Greed.” Two commenters with better memories than mine mentioned that there have been other “Saturday Night Live” parodies besides the Gilda Radner “Hey You” that I dug up, and so off I went to fetch them.

It appears that these high-strung tycoons are a little bit, um, sensitive when it comes to this sort of thing! There was one SNL parody of the early Brooke Shields/Calvin Klein involving a cream pie and a face, but I couldn’t retrieve the clip -- anywhere -- and so can only assume that there was some legal involvement. (If anybody else finds it, please let me know, eh?)

But I did catch “Canis,” from 1992, and here it is, courtesy of our friends (I hope) at the Internet Movie Database.

That is one happy dog, and who doesn’t love a happy dog?

It turns out that doggie perfumes named after fragrances designed for humans have caused a bit of trouble, specifically one called “Timmy Holedigger” which Tommy Hilfiger did not think was funny at all. He even sued. Guess what: Timmy won!

Just goes to show ya: sometimes even the biggest dogs can be brought to, um, heel.



photo used under license from Dreamstime.com.

3 comments:

Mark Evans said...

Have you seen the advert for Lamb Fragrance produced by Meat and Livestock Australia?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRVrVmBYgB4

There was no indication at the time that it was actually a lamb (the meat) commercial. I remember wondering if it was another creation by Chris Brosius LOL!

Anonymous said...

Olfacta, thanks so much for tracking "Canis" down! It's as perfect as I thought. Every perfume marketer needs to see this, as a reminder to back away from excess.
-- Gretchen

chayaruchama said...

You had me at the picture !

Timmy Holedigger...I'm in love, girl !