New SVEDKA fembot ads to push retro tech and future sex.
The SVEDKA vodka robot brought her curves to the alcohol TV and media campaigns in 2005. As we reported, the Swedish company was ahead of its time in its sexualization of robots. Now SVEDKA has two new commercials, showing that the sexy robot campaign is still pushing our buttons.
The first features the fembot dancing to the 1983 Midnight Starr hit “Freak-a-zoid”. The second has the fembot walking around an abstract city and, later, taking off on a lipstick rocket ship.
What we find most fascinating is SVEDKA’s old-school approach to technology. For instance, the second clip has the fembot talking on a first-generation cell phone – the kind that are shaped like a brick and weigh about five pounds. The first clip is even more obvious with its ode to the post-disco decade. (SVEDKA may also be giving a nod to the original “Freak-a-zoid” music video featuring a nerd programming the virtual woman of his dreams.”
image source: Svedka
Why go retro as opposed to a hyper-realistic, uncanny valley approach available today? I think SVEDKA is trying to appeal to our idealized view of the future, not our modern view of now. In the eighties and earlier, we believed the new millennium would bring flying cars, jetpacks and even fully-sexualized robots into the mainstream. Consider the early sixties cartoon The Jetsons and its visions of the future. It seems the farther back we go from our modern era, the more optimism we have as far as what’s possible tomorrow. The new SVEDKA campaign has us go back so we can remember being optimistic about how robots would change our lives for the better – sexually and otherwise.
Perhaps SVEDKA realizes that the sexualized robot is already a reality, so the best way to appeal to us is with the fantasies of yesterday, not the realities of today. We will say this: It certainly is entertaining.
