Sometimes I think that, when the skittles company was still in its tender years of advertising, a wise marketer took it aside and said:

“Look, your catch phrase is a problem. Not only does it make no sense, a rainbow being nothing more than light refracted through a prism – tasteless and intangible – but it also makes the mind jump to unicorns. You don’t want your product associated with unicorns. Trust me.”

And so the Skittle Company begged the wise marketer  to tell it what to do.
“Change your slogan” he advised. But the Skittle Company didn’t want to. They pleaded, groveled, and cajoled him to think of a way they could use their treasured catch phrase without having to bring in unicorns, until finally the wise old marketer said “There is a way, but it’s dangerous. Not every product can pull it off.”

“We’ll do it,” Said the skittle company. “For the sake of our rainbow of flavours, we’ll do it”

And thus was born the skittle commercials: The men held by giant hands, the kid with the skittle tree, the blender angered at being replaced – all attempting to be so surreally fantastical that they make the slogan (“taste the rainbow”) seem not only quite normal but safe and familiar.

At least, that’s how I imagine it to be. But then again, I don’t like skittles.