Old School Thursday - The Original Mother Nature

Back in April I wrote a post about the different ways Mother Nature is used in two resent commercials. As a comment, someone suggested looking back at the Chiffon Margarine Mother Nature commercial. Since, this commercial ran before I was born and I had never seen it, I figured it would be perfect for Old School Thursday.



This commercial is interesting because they use Mother Nature as both the caring life giving figure as well as the vengeful fiend. In the beginning when Mother Nature believes she is eating her all naturally created butter, she’s happy and cheerful expunging the wonderful virtues of her creation. After she is told the butter she is enjoying so much is actually margarine, she becomes a vengeful, lightning throwing version of her previous self. The duality of Mother Nature in this commercial directly contradicts the singular character Mother Natures in the two recent spots.

It’s an interesting approach for Chiffon to take with the way this commercial is set up. While Mother Nature is enjoying the butter she is happy and cheerful. Once she realizes she has been tricked and is actually eating margarine she becomes angry. The natural progression of this commercial would have you believe that butter is good and margarine is bad, or that tricking Mother Nature is bad. I wouldn’t want to eat margarine after seeing this commercial. I would be afraid to offend Mother Nature. She may throw a lightning bolt at me too.

Even with the voiced over line about Chiffon Margarine being creamy and sweet enough to trick Mother Nature I still think it falls short. You get the payoff but are immediately distracted by what Mother Nature is going to do.

In my mind this commercial definitely did not withstand the test of time. What do you think about the commercial and the use of Mother Nature?

-Dennis