The current tested on guinea pigs adverts by the online bank Egg are funny – not a belly laugh, but they really make me smile.  See Adland ad-rag.com. I think they show that ordinary people, and the advertisers, can accept that “testing on guinea pigs” is a routine activity and not something to get agitated about. Yes, they anthropomorphise animals and raise a cheap laugh at their expense, but then so do a lot of cartoons.

A spokesperson for Egg said:

"Egg has a tradition of creating ‘edgy’ adverts and our guinea pigs campaign is no different. 

“The central idea behind the campaign is that Egg has launched a revolutionary new product that has not existed before. The guinea pigs are used to try to get across the new and experimental side of Egg Money. 

“The adverts are clearly tongue-in-cheek, with guinea pigs simply representing a metaphor of human behaviour and attitudes with reference to money.  The adverts are not intended as a statement on animal testing. 

“The images of the guinea pigs are clearly mocked-up and at no point were any animals were harmed in the making of the adverts.  In fact the adverts were filmed using actors wearing specially constructed guinea-pig body suits with custom made clothes. They were trained and choreographed by an expert in animal movement, to give them the correct body articulation associated with guinea-pigs. The heads of real guinea pigs were filmed later, to match with the movements of the actors; these were then combined in post-production with the bodies.

“We are sorry if the adverts offend anyone this is not our intention."

It’s interesting that Egg feel the need to defend the ads, even though there have not been any complaints. Given the antivivisectionists’ frequent sense-of-humour failures – for instance they protested strongly about the satirical cartoon series I Am Not An Animal – a whole slew of complaints would have come as no surprise. What is rather surprising is that “RSPCA were fully involved in all the filming”.