Source: Cadbury/YouTube

Watch: Model from Cadbury Creme Egg Ad Claps Back at Haters

Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 2 MIN.

It's no great surprise that haters took aim at the recent LGBQ-inclusive ad for Cadbury's creme eggs, but one of the models in the ad's "sticky same-sex kiss" isn't putting up with what he notes is a double standard.

The ad features models Callum Sterling and Dale Moran sharing a Cadbury's creme egg in mouth-to-mouth "Lady and the Tramp" style.

The ad has prompted "homophobic trolling on social media," reports Ad Age.

Sharing a post from another user at Instagram that calls out the fuss made by those who decry the ad while ignoring the nonstop barrage of (hetero) sexualized images that consumers are subjected to every day, Sterling points out that far fewer people would complain about an identical ad casting "two 'beautiful' cisgendered hetero-looking Caucasian women."

"So it's ok when an advert sexualises a women, a caucasian women, THIRTY SEVEN years ago even, to benefit the male gaze and make other women feel inadequate if they do not live up to this beauty standard," Sterling wrote, referencing a lipstick ad from 1984 that featured Lynda Carter. The vintage ad was contained in the post he was sharing.

"But it's not okay, in 2021, to have an advert of a multi racial (strike one) gay couple (strike two) on your screens for 10 seconds (strike three) eating/kissing/sexualised (strike four)," Sterling continued, going on to add, "does anyone see how ridiculous this is? Like actual LOL."

Saying his career as an out dancer in London has gifted him with a thick skin, Sterling tore into the baseless claim that imagery showing two men in an affectionate or intimate situation might somehow make children gay.

"I'm off to find a women to experiment with because all of those hetero based visuals that were forced upon me as a child have left me confused and unsure about my sexuality, damn maybe I'll end up straight?!

"I fucking love being gay," Sterling declared in a final flourish.

Sterling and Moran appear among others in the ad, which celebrates fifty years of the Cadbury confection and catalogues the different sorts of approaches creme egg fans take to eating the chocolate-and-creme candy. Among the "lickers," "dippers," and others the ad portrays are the "sharers," who want to make a good thing better by inviting a friend - or a significant other - to join in the feast. The ad shows the two men holding hands while spinning around joyfully and nibbling together on the lip-smacking treat, while the ad's narrator enthuses, "Sharers? Yeah, we are down with that!"

Cadbury is owned by Mondelez, which has recently brought out two other LGBTQ-themed ads for its products. In one, for Oreo cookies, a young woman brings her girlfriend home for the first time and her father struggles to find a way to express his support. Another ad, for Ritz crackers, celebrates family bonds at Christmas time, regardless of whether the family is by blood or choice. The Ritz crackers ad also features a same-sex couple.

Watch the ad below.


by Kilian Melloy , EDGE Staff Reporter

Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.

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