As far as I can remember, hatred towards wolves was firmly forgotten around the age of eleven. But it’s true, wolves have played the scapegoat in children’s literature of many generations. Nevertheless, these ads may be flat, the copy difficult to read and comprehend, and perhaps not the most inspired visuals – but I love them all the same.

The vintage fading and imagery is reminiscent of a time when we succumbed to the beauty of fairytales, from where we extracted all of the wrong and right and morals of the world. These messages would guide us for many years into the future, long after the fairytales had been relinquished to history.

Once upon a time, fairytales were actually cautionary tales of morality to adults. But age has surrendered their appeal to infants – and perhaps, engendered an unconscious hatred towards the perpetrators of evil in those stories.

Mission Wolf has a point here – it is far easier to sympathise with the endangered pandas and tigers of the world than the wolf; the attractive orphan images pioneered by the WWF. To be honest, I had no idea that grey wolves were even in danger. But in spite of whatever role wolves played in fiction, or in history, they are as entitled to support and charity as any other threatened species.

Perhaps, having left childhood firmly in the past, we can leave some of those inherent associations behind as well. After all,  now that we know how controversial Lewis Carroll and Enid Blyton were – do we really want to base all of our morality upon their stories? In moving forward, we can recognise that the “big bad wolf” already had his comeuppance in literature – he doesn’t need it in real life as well.

Advertising Agency: 22squared, Tampa, USA
Creative Directors: John Stapleton, James Rosene
Copywriter: James Rosene
Art Director: Danny Corrales
Illustration: Stock

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