Malvern Star, an Australian bicycle manufacturing company that draws its namesake from an inner-east suburb of Melbourne where the streets are famously lined with Jacranda trees and colonial wrought iron residential buildings, does not seem like the kind of business that would push the limits of social acceptability in its advertising. The company sponsors athletes in events ranging from the UCI World Championships to the Tour de France to the Weetbix Kids TRYathlon 2010. In October last year, the 1970 Malvern Dragstar bicycle was selected to be featured as “one of the five enduring classic toys featured on the Australia Post set of stamps” alongside Barbie and Cabbage Patch Kids.
So it’s fun to imagine how the naughty advertising minds behind this television spot, which ends with a man getting a bicycle tire crammed into his nekked arse, convinced the iconic, family-friendly company to let loose and re-brand themselves with a little more edge.
I couldn’t find a whole lot of dependable information about this specific video, so it’s possible that it was targeted to a specific event and never actually aired on television. It may have been leaked to the internet from an advertising agency’s cutting room floor as well. But I prefer to believe that despite the company’s postage-stamp-barbie-doll-classic toys facade, the powers that be at Malvern are still at heart just down to earth dirt bags with a twisted sense of humor, as all outdoor recreation business tycoons should be.
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The writeup of this assumes that Australia has the same, humorless and repressive view of nudity that the US does. This ad might not be all that risqué in Australia. For the most part, American media is unable to separate nudity from sex. I don’t know a lot about Australia, so I can say for sure, but maybe they don’t have the same view.