He gives him electric shocks, bottles him with medicines, stings him with a syringe and, finally, cuts his head: the brilliant Peta campaign takes up a little girl struggling with a poor laboratory mouse and with a very particular game.
Everything seems to have come out of one 90s advertisingdirectly from our childhood, until the message strikes hard. It is in fact called “My first laboratory animal“, The shocking and satirical campaign that aims to denounce once again the cruelty of animal experiments financed by American taxpayers.
Transmitted, in fact, from US television, the spot presents a happy girl to discover her new toy: an imaginary scientific kit that reproduces real procedures performed on animals in the laboratories of National Institutes of Health (Nih). All marked by a slogan as cynical as it is effective: “The toy playing with life!“
The spot
Siringhe, Electroshock, drowning in a glass or even beheading with guillotine … everything is presented with the naive enthusiasm of an advertising. A deliberately absurd staging to denounce the trivialization of inhuman practices in the workshops, often financed without any real scientific use.
The key to humor and tension of this film lies in our sincerity. By drawing on the sweet and sincere elements of the toy advertisements of the 90s, we were able to create some of the most cruel realities of animal tests, explains the director.
The result is as disturbing as it is effective. By contacting the generation Y, which are now in turn parents, Peta hopes to impress and increase awareness of the need for a reform of research methods.
A strong message on the waste of public funds
Beyond the moral complaint, advertising also highlights the enormous waste of public money. Peta stresses that almost half of the NiH annual budget is dedicated to studies involving animals, while 90% of the basic research do not lead to any treatment for humans and 95% of drugs tested on animals fails clinical studies.
Absurd and cruel experiments are regularly financed, such as separating monkey puppies from their mothers or repeatedly shocking mice to induce panic attacks.
Will this new provocative campaign mobilize an even wider audience and push the authorities to invest in alternative, more ethical and more effective methods?
