Join us for a deep dive into some of the horniest advertisements to ever grace our TV screens. 

This week The Spinoff has been talking all things porn: our relationship with it, how we think about it and how we watch it. There’s a whole world of sexy content out there, but what if some of the steamiest stuff has been right in front of us all along?

For years, innocent products like chocolate and shampoo have been horned up with soft lighting and saucy flute music and chucked into ad breaks willy-nilly, an unexpectedly steamy session of product placement smack bang between Seven Sharp and Border Patrol. There are ads so spicy they need a warning, ads so raunchy it’s a wonder they made it on the telly at all. Sex sells, so we found ten of the sauciest ads to ever grace our screens.

Carlos Spencer’s Toffee Pops ad

As Lucy Zee wrote on this very website back in 2017, this is the horniest biscuit ad this country has ever created. “The commercial starts off with a woman aged 25-54 years, unwinding in what looks like a very expensive house, satisfying her sweet tooth with a Toffee Pop,” she recaps. “Suddenly, Carlos Spencer walks in – abs first – wearing loose white undergarments and a silk robe… The scene is intoxicatingly erotic and heavy lidded.” It was a campaign so successful that it launched Toffee Pop’s search for the hunk of the year, and even received a BSA complaint for being “offensive to men”. Carlos Spencer now renovates home on telly with nary a robe or tea light candle in sight, but we will always have the Toffee Pops ad. / Alex Casey

Woman has a bath with a Flake

This 1992 gem puts the filth back into bathtime. Contrary to the reality of eating the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate in a large tub of water, this is a steamy, dreamy dance of decadence. Before we set eyes on that little chocolate minx, there’s 27 seconds of lips and chins and frankly, you’ll never look at tapware the same again. It’s the best in Flake’s long history of suggestive ads, including this incredible piece of history. Someone open a window, it’s getting hot in here. / Tara Ward

Nigella loves Whittaker’s Chocolate 

Nobody oozes sex appeal quite like our Nigella, who will be remembered for a chocolate campaign so sensual that it even earned itself a perfect Funny Girls parody. Steamier stuff than a micro-wah-vey on high. / AC

Robert Pattinson’s Dior ad

OK, this isn’t a local ad and I don’t think it ever aired on television because otherwise the entire world have exploded. But as a straight woman who came of age around the release of Twilight (2008), this Dior Homme ad is genuinely the most pornographic piece of content I have ever seen in my entire life. Don’t even get me started on the tuxedo, or the bit under the table, or the upside-down Spider Man kiss. Yes, the dancing is weird but isn’t being yourself – aka krumping in slow motion – the sexiest thing of all? In the words of one YouTube commenter “I need a prequel and a sequel. I need the behind the scenes, I NEED A FULL DVD COMMENTARY.” Also, I love how Robert Pattinson famously smells bad and/or like crayons and still nabbed a Dior cologne contract. That. Is. Potency. / AC

Aero Melt puts heaven inside you

This Aero chocolate ad from the 2000s (at 1.32 here) is so saucy it makes the Flake bath scene look like amateur hour. Mouths! Holes! Nipples! A man and woman literally melt into each other, before the woman says “If there’s a heaven on earth, it’s happening right inside of me”. Call the Advertising Standards Authority, this is 30 seconds of pure unadulterated horn. / TW

Ooh! Ah! Fruju 

It’s going to hit you: “Ooh! Ah! Ooh! Ah! Ooh! Ah! OOH!” The most fun you can have in your togs, probably. / TW

Stephen from The Apprentice Aotearoa’s RUDE coffee ad

For a product that simply screams RUDE, it was only fitting that the accompanying advertising lived up to the name. Stephen from The Apprentice Aotearoa released his bizarre raunchy opus earlier in the year, a feature-length advertisement that featured explosions, a milk moustache and a naked office hug that was in no way HR approved. I still think about Kennedy’s cameo as ‘Unnamed Courier Guy’ to this very day. / AC

Herbal Essences

Herbal Essences became known for their thinly-veiled orgasm ads in the 1990s, so you can basically take your pick from any one of them. But this ad, which features a trio of burly men storming in and singing “she’s got the urge” is probably the second best hair-based courtroom sequence ever committed to screen. The first, of course, is this. / AC

Moritz chess game

There’s nothing worse than chocolate falling off your ice cream, but Moritz wants us to turn disappointment into opportunity. Ice cream fallen on your boobs? Simply ask your fellow chess player to straddle you while he speaks Italian, and suddenly life seems a lot brighter. A shorter, hornier version of The Queen’s Gambit, and the sooner they bring back Black Forest Moritz, the better. / TW

You just can’t beat the Mad Butcher’s meat

While travelling overseas many moons ago, I happened upon some questionable porn set in a Dutch abattoir. It was not an English-language film and years later I am still none the wiser as to why those voracious lovers found themselves surrounded by several hanging animal carcasses, but it proves the point: you just can’t beat the Mad Butcher’s meat. As the jingle goes, “Cause it’s fresher / Yeah it’s fresher / The Mad Butcher’s meat / You just can’t beat it”, and in this high cost of living era, sometimes nothing is more satisfying than a juicy cut of meat at an affordable price. / TW