So most of us have sat watching an advert thinking, quite frankly, “wtf?!”

But that’s actually an effective advertising technique. By asking ourselves, “wtf is this an advert for?!”, we are automatically engaged – the advert is a puzzle, and we’re trying to solve it. So yeah, we get it, those kind of adverts capture our attention and they’re pretty entertaining.

But is there such a thing as going TOO far? Where do we draw the line?

Let’s test that out. And what adverts are more likely to be confusing and weird than condom ads? Here are some of the most hilariously confusing condom ads we’ve seen. Too much? You tell us!

1. Hero Condoms - Saving Lives

So here we are in a lovely, softly lit restaurant, enjoying a quiet meal… when SUDDENLY a middle aged man starts choking on his food. Everyone in the restaurant looks appalled and several women run over to loosen his tie in an attempt to save his life. That’s when one of these women cries, “Is there a doctor?” and, sure enough, a doctor sitting in the restaurant volunteers to help by raising his hand, saying “right here!”, and rushing forward…

Then he pushes the cutlery off the table with a sweep of his arm and lifts the girl who called for a doctor up onto it, kissing her… and then… they have sex. In the restaurant. They take off each others’ clothes and have loud, passionate sex on the table while the man chokes to death next to them and everyone looks on silently. A man in the restaurant falls off his chair, and a father covers his child’s eyes.

What’s goingon?!

Well Hero Condoms were giving a condom to a developing country every time someone bought a pack, so the slogan was, “have sex, save a life”.

P.S. The choking man still goes red and falls to the floor at the end, so that’s confusing…

2. Trojan - Real Sock

So a man and a woman are about to have sex, and the man reaches into his bedside drawer for a condom. He can’t find one. He gets more frantic, jumbling its contents around, and then looks around the room until he spots a dirty white sock on the floor. Then he smiles, as if to say, “I’ve found what I was looking for”. As in, I can USE THIS OLD DIRTY SOCK AS A CONDOM.

The next shot is the man being thrown out of the hotel room, but he’s not alone. He turns to see another man who has been thrown out of the room next door. They look at each other and smile. The man holds up the sock and the other man responds by holding up a WELLINGTON BOOT, and they both smile, as if to say, “oh what are we like?”. Is putting a massive shoe up a lady’s hoo ha too much? IS IT?!

A narrator then says the slogan, “put a real sock on”. *SHUDDER*

3. Durex - Love Sex

This one’s a little odd. We see a girl bouncing gently and thoughtfully on certain things in her house, like a chair and a bouncey exercise ball. Then she tears some cellotape off with her teeth. She carries on in this way until we hear the doorbell ringing. When she opens the door a boy is revealed crouching on her front step, picking up all the condoms that have fallen out of his bag and all over the porch. He looks super embarrassed.

Then the camera pans from them to a bookcase in the house, and there’s a condom cellotaped to it. So THAT’S what she was up to! Genius. Durex also did a reverse gender version, and the tagline was simply, “love sex”.

Tbf, if you were going to have sex absolutely everywhere in the house, cellotaping condoms within easy reach of wherever you might end up would be quite handy. Talk about stamina!

4. Trojan - Evolve

Picture this: we’re in a launderette. Two lads (let’s call them Lad 1 and Lad 2) are only here to seek out “hot chicks”, obviously. They’re probably just putting clean stuff in the wash in order to pull – classic weekend.

As Lad 1 points out each girl in the launderette, Lad 2 looks at each of them in turn. At first he sees them as Lad 1 does – as normal and attractive girls. But, as he looks, he discovers all of the girls have scale-like things on their faces, or tentacles hanging out their skirts… like sea monsters or something?! He recoils in horror cos he’s not very attracted to that kind of thing, weirdly.

Lad 1 asks, “what’s wrong with you?” and Lad 2 replies by whispering in his ear. Lad 1 then hands Lad 2 a condom, and the problem is fixed – the girls are normal and hot, and tentacle-less.

So wtf is the message? Its: “Evolve. Use a condom every time”. Brilliant.

5. Trojan - Nothing There

A nervous man in a white dressing gown is in a salon, ready for a massage. The masseuse, who’s this mega-hot, lipgloss wearing, cleavage sporting sex-pot, holds out her hand for the massage money and, as the guy gets out money to pay for a massage, condoms fall out of his wallet. She smiles mischievously.

Cut to the guy’s face as he’s getting a massage, and the masseuse looks like she’s having a pretty erotic time. She then says things like, “turn over”, and, “do you like that?”, and the guy has a full sex face on. The next shot is zoomed out to include both of them and she’s just rubbing his chest weirdly and he’s enjoying it way too much.

The writing then comes up: “Ecstasy – feels like nothing’s there!” Kind of makes sense cos they both felt like they were having sex even though they weren’t doing anything… but then why the need for a condom at all?! Confused.

6. Trojan Magnum Condoms - Golden Ticket

A man and a woman have arrived back from a date, and the man invites her inside his house. When they are in the bedroom he goes to the bathroom in order to “freshen up a bit”, leaving her to poke around his room. She opens his bedside table drawer and smiles – she has discovered several Trojan condoms that are labelled “Trogan Magnum: large size condoms”.

She holds one up to the camera and says, “I’ve got the golden ticket”, smugly. Basically she’s happy that she can expect a big willy tonight. Weird that there’s a reference to a kids book (Roald Dahl’s ‘Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory’) in there though… you can even hear the theme music play quietly in the background…

Anyway, after she says this the man comes to the bathroom door and tells her, “hey, try not to touch anything, it’s my roommate’s room, mines getting fumigated”. DAMN, so CLOSE!

The slogan? ‘The golden ticket to a good time’.

7. Trojan - Travel In Style

A young couple are about to “take it to the next level” for the first time, and the guy has clearly come prepared as he has a long string of condoms at hand. Just as they are about to do the naughty though, the girl’s dad walks in with a large box of stuff (the boy hides under the bed) and says they are moving to Sri Lanka because he’s got a job transfer.

The rest of the advert is a showreel of the boy’s massive worldwide quest to get his girl back, armed with the long condom string. He hitchhikes, he crosses seas and deserts, travels across hills and through long grass plains… he even gets arrows shot at him by native tribes and is mauled by a bear. Worth it, right?

Wrong! He enters his old flame’s bedroom, bedraggled and dirty, only to find that the girl has a new boyfriend. The new guy simply holds up an ‘ultra thin’ condom and says, “next time, travel in style” before joining the girl on the bed to have sex.

Then the bear attacks him from behind again and the advert ends. Excuse me?

8. Naked condoms - Sex Is More Fun Naked

A couple are peering at a shop shelf lined with Naked condoms when a shop assistant comes over to ask them what kind of thing they are looking for. When they reply that they don’t really know what size to buy, the helpful assistant just says, “ok, why don’t we just try one on?”

Cut to scene where the couple are naked and having sex IN THE SHOP, while the assistant looks on and asks questions like, “how does that feel?”, and another old man in a white coat (who presumably works there too, but who’s creepy either way) says something weird like, “you know it really brings out the colour in your eyes, it’s very nice”.

And they just keep going, trying different sizes of condom in different positions all around the shop while the customers go about their pharmacy purchases, bored of the same old mundane routine. The weirdest part is where the girl starts chatting to her mum on the phone and is all, “yeah I’m good, just trying on some condoms with Tyson”… AS IF you’re telling your mum you’re having sex in a shop AS YOU’RE SPEAKING TO HER…

Up come the Naked condom packets at the end and the slogan is read out: “sex is more fun naked, so get Naked, and let the fun begin”. Perhaps not in a shop though…

9. Durex - Real Love

A large wrestling man and a woman in a white robe stand opposite each other and snarl as menacing drumbeats signal that there is about to be a fight. The woman flings off her robe to reveal her in her underwear, and then they run at each other. They look like they are wrestling, but then there’s a hand on a bum, a nuzzle of the neck, and all of a sudden they’re in this weird sexual embrace, before he wacks her down in slo-mo and they are lying there in a sex position, holding hands.

Then, along to the same intense Lord-of-the Rings-style soundtrack, the pair get into loads of different sex positions and freeze there. It goes on for an uncomfortably long amount of time.

The slogan is ‘Real love with DUREX tonight’. Then they both laugh as they lie on top of each other, and the advert ends, leading us to think – “wtf have I just watched?!”.

10. MTV Staying Alive Foundation - Foreplay Threesome

This one is by MTV’s very own Staying Alive Foundation, and it’s brilliant (we’re totally unbiased). But it’s also pretty wtf, too.

To a sexy backing track, giant real-life emojis, the same size as people if not bigger, saunter along with human legs. There’s a banana and a donut emoji, a pointy finger and an ‘O’ symbol emoji, a peach and an aubergine emoji, and all of them are about to get hot and heavy… yep, they’re gonna penetrate each other.

Enter condom emoji, and it’s got swag. It spots them, and as the banana penetrates the donut, the pointy finger the O and the aubergine the peach, three giant condoms come to join the party, and they jiggle around together to the beat.

The slogan? “Make foreplay a threesome, add a condom”. God, we’re good.

- Emily Hooley