Hansel and Gretel’s Big Adventure

            AT&T created a thirty-second commercial that used frightened and lost children, who innocently tried throwing a food product to get home from a day alone in a city, to display the dangers of not buying their technology. The video advertisement used Hansel and Gretel's story of throwing breadcrumbs to show the futility of using any other system of navigation than AT&T's.

 Hansel and Gretel, contrary to the commercial, actually succeeded in returning home after finding themselves lost. Whereas the children in the video are completely doomed when their means of direction are eaten and they are wandering the streets at night. In the story, the siblings had overheard their parents’ plan to leave them in the forest and so Hansel prepared for the occasion by collecting shiny pebbles that glittered in the moonlight to lead them back. It is only after Hansel is locked inside the house prior to being deserted in the forest the second time, that they got lost through throwing bread crumbs as an alternative. In the commercial though, AT&T completely ignored the part of the fable that included the children’s insight and resourcefulness, so as to make their product seem all the more necessary for the prevention of being lost and alone in dangerous territory. If it instead displayed the kids getting home perfectly fine by using their own method despite it taking all night, then the phone would seem nice and useful to the public but definitely not imperative to survival. Hansel and Gretel, at the end of the thirty seconds, were truly adrift and afraid with nothing to guide them home. Then all of the sudden the old-fashioned looking girl pulls out the brand-new lightning fast AT&T gps devise and the children are joyful again. For the kids now know that they are safe and are going to be okay. So they gleefully go skipping down the streets of downtown, in a foreign city, in the dark, at night, by themselves, as long as they have their gps. AT&T used their own version of a classic tale to exponentially heighten the necessity and impact of their phone.