PATOS – THE NEW VIAGRA

You can forget about Viagra and Cialis. In Turkey there is a new product on the market that is available without a prescription, easily found and apparently gives you the same results.

There are things in Turkey that still shock, then baffle me. Turkey seems to me like a country that leans towards conservative and, for the most part, is rooted in its religious traditions. Yet I still can’t come to grips with the fact that transvestites and soft porn newspapers (on newsstands found between the communist paper and the sports paper) are a common site in this city.

But yesterday I saw something that to date takes the cake. My beloved teenhood snack – Bugles – is now available in Turkey under the name of Patos Critos. And their clever ad campaign positions Patos Critos as the 3-dimensional chip. This concept has been creatively visualized in their TV ad, which I saw for the first time last night.


A 2-dimensional guy is sitting at a bus stop looking very bored. A 2-D girl sits down next to him and starts munching on Patos Critos. As she eats the 3-D snack, she becomes a hot 3-D chick, her face and hair popping out, then her chest, etc. 2-D guy is no longer bored but intrigued. She offers him some of her crunchy 3-D snack, and he also becomes 3-dimensional. They don’t show where exactly, but when they both look down, she gets shocked and he gets embarrassed leaving it up to the viewer’s imagination…

Needless to say, I will be very strategic about where and with whom I eat my Bugles.