Question: Do any of you (Canadians) remember this ad?

I was just remembering an old commercial from my childhood days in Canada. It was for a new and thin maxi pad that was folded up and covered in a “discreet” polka-dotted plastic. It wasn’t that small, but it was for the time (the early 80s) . The premise was that a set of spies were trying to get “the microfilm” from this sexy female spy. The dumb-ass male spy grabs her maxi pad instead, and says: “We have you now. We have the microfilm!” And she says, in some indeterminate accent, “Dat’s not it, you fool.”

It was on one level the dumbest commercial ever. What kind of spy thinks a polka dotted maxi pad is microfilm? I mean, sure, floppy disks were big then, but come on! This new pad wasn’t that thin anyway. Things didn’t really improve for the ladies in that department until the 90s or so, when ultra ultra thin with wings and stay-dri cover © and industrial-strength adhesives were put to good use.

I mean, I remember when I first got my period. I was old, even for back then. 15! So I was more than looking forward to it as some sort of mark that I was indeed turning into a woman, even though I remained stubbornly hairless and flat as a board.

So when it did finally come, my mom pulled out a maxi pad the size of my bedroom pillow. I nearly passed out. This was supposed to go between my legs? I’d be walking like Cowboy Joe at the O.K. Corral.

And my mom was not into tampons (no pun intended, eww). I don’t know why, and I never asked. But later, toxic shock syndrome was big in the news and possibly this is why my mother kept no tampons in the house or within a five-block radius.

Ahh, feminine hygiene. Talking about it makes men so uncomfortable. It cracks me up. I mean, it’s just another bodily function. But certainly I don’t feel like advertising it when I’m in my “womanly condition.” Remember in high school, girls, when you had to carry your pad/tampon undiscovered to the girls’ room, where you had to make your private transaction as quietly as possible and not let the metal lid clang down and advertise to the world that you were indeed “visiting Aunt Rose.”

Which brings me back to the ad I was reminiscing about. It was downright BRILLIANT to have a man actually handling a maxi pad, and the fact that he thought it was microfilm in a plastic polka dotted case is hilarious.

I’d like to thank the advertising exec who came up with that. She had an agenda, on behalf of women everywhere. Put a pad in the hands of a man! Well played, my friend, well played.