VIPoo Australia: Advert for Air Wick toilet spray raises eyebrows

SOMETHING very strange happened on Sunday night.

There we were, in our millions, innocently watching Australian Ninja Warrior. Then, in the break, an advert so tacky popped up for a product so bizarre with a name so out there that many people thought it was a joke.

Particularly as the product it was spruiking — a toilet air freshener you spray BEFORE you do your business — was something we never knew we needed.

Australia, a product actually called V.I.Poo has landed.

Like an Exocet missile of air fresheners, it hit us between the eyes strategically dumping on prime time TV the phrases “poopulate” and “punish the porcelain”.

“Did I really just see an ad for a product called V.I.Poo?” said one baffled Twitter user said on Sunday.

Those who watched said ad can never unsee it.

But if you didn’t, it was a masterpiece of the craft. A Hollywood “actor” confides to us she sometimes likes to go for a number two when — shock horror — at work.

“Even Hollywood’s latest sweet heart needs to punish the porcelain,” she tells us.

OK, you’ve got our attention.

“So I give every bathroom the V.I.Poo treatment,” she adds, removing said spray from her clutch.

In a supermarket aisle full of air fresheners that play up how they will drown out any musky earthy aromas with a gentle floral waft, V.I.Poo, in contrast, focuses squarely on the emitter of that smell.

“V.I.Poo forms a protective layer trapping the icky smell of devil’s doughnuts.”

If you’re not sure what she means by “devil’s doughnuts” a helpful graphic shows us some actual brown stools lolloping about in the bowl. Now you know.

“Stink the house out when you’re with your Beverly Hills besties? How embarrassing.”

I KNOW, RIGHT!

Some have doubted whether V.I.Poo is a genuine product.

But Reckitt Benckiser, the UK-Dutch consumer products giant which markets V.I.Poo under the Air Wick brand, has assured us it’s no fake.

News.com.au has contacted Reckitt Benckiser to ask if the branding and ad were deliberately designed to shock people into submission. They haven’t replied yet — maybe they’re on the john.

The company did send through some, totally watertight, research and found the majority of Australians “held in a poo” because they were too embarrassed to dump it in the dunny in public toilets.

Half of women won’t go to the loo at work, compared to 29 per cent of men, and our movements take seven minutes on average. Over the course of the year that’s almost three whole working days spent on the throne.

Men aren’t so fussed but women have poo paranoia and will blame any escaping odours on their partner or dog before confessing to the unforgivable crime of having a functional bowel.

However, some people have taken umbrage at that the ad which seems obsessed with women hiding their habits from men.

“Why let tinsel town know you just bombed?,” she says. “No red faces in front of your boss, Hollywood’s hottest [male] director”.

Turns out Australia is only the latest country to get the V.I.Poo treatment.

Created in the US, everywhere it’s launched, eyebrows have been raised.

Brits were “baffled” by the ad, wrote The Sunearlier this year. “The V.I.Poo adverts are so cringe”, said one social media user.

Nevertheless, like Hollywood stars, V.I.Poo has fans.

On Amazon, one V.I.Poo addict said she hating doing a two on the run and that “pooing anxiety will soon be a thing of the past”.

“My housemates keep announcing when they’ve relieved themselves for the rest of us to check how great the product is,” they added.

Those funster flatmates.

Another Brit gave a vivid description of how he road-tested the spray.

“Excitedly I bought some and, keen to test out its bold claims, I also bought an Indian set meal for one also,” Ross Blue said.

“Patiently I waited and soon my guts started to let me know the time was now. I gave five squirts of V.I.Poo to the surface of the toilet water and then sent Mr Brown off to the coast.”

Mr Blue said he then asked his wife to give a second opinion and “the anticipated stench failed to materialise,” reported The Mirror. Crisis averted.

Whether Australians will take quite so enthusiastically to V.I.Poo remains to be seen.

But, as our Hollywood friend tells us, now she can “poopulate” anywhere with confidence.

If she can, maybe we can too.

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