Full disclosure: I’m a vegetarian. And as vegetarians are fond of saying, I don’t eat anything that has (or had) a face. But herbivorous preferences aside, I still have to wonder which segment of consumers finds eyebrows to be an appetizing addition to a chocolate chip cookie.

Food mascots are a time-honored tradition. I don’t have a problem with Toucan Sam or Tony the Tiger; the Pillsbury Doughboy doesn’t rub me the wrong way, nor does the Hamburger Helper Helping Hand; and while Chester Cheetah doesn’t make me want to eat Cheetos, he’s no less appealing than the product he hawks.

My issue is with ads that attempt to sell edible products by transforming the food itself into an expressive, accessorized, hair-producing biped.

Take Chips Ahoy for example. Below is a frame from a recent commercial that not only shows the cookie sporting a complete set of teeth and askew baseball hat, but also depicts it on an outdoor staircase leading up to an apartment building. It’s more likely to send me running to medicine cabinet for Listerine than heading to the cupboard for a cookie.

Another recent offender comes from the much-lauded Miami ad machine, Crispin Porter + Bogusky. In a short-lived spot for Dominoes pizza, the shop chose to promote a new line of pastas via a rapping rigatoni noodle that magically appears in a suburban kitchen and sends a family of four into a state of panic typically reserved for low-budget horror films. Adorned with the requisite backwards baseball hat and neck jewelry, “Pasta Dude” drops lyrics like, “the whole family’s down, we’re all getting’ some” while writhing his body to the hip-hop beat. Disturbing? Yes. Delicious? Hardly.

The list goes on and on. From the affable m&m characters, to the Wienerschnitzel hot dog, creatives across America feel compelled to give life to the lifeless, limbs to the limbless and lips to the lipless. I, for one, would prefer that they made the food look more appetizing and, well, less like me.  

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