Flavour-explosion food shots intercut with footage of funky youngsters chomping on snacks and doing their best ‘Wow! I Can’t Believe How Delicious This Is!’ faces, all set to an unbelievably cringey rap: it’s the new Walkers Max ad.

“Cool down the heat with something cold,” it goes, like an embarrassing physics teacher determined to connect with da kidz. “Go on, taste the bold!”

The ‘heat, flavour and crunch’ message is explained bluntly – it seems the Max Strong range has been brought under the umbrella, as part of a spot of portfolio tidying – but even this doesn’t seem like a great idea: are these attributes at the expense of each other?

There’s an outside chance this is an ironic spoof of naff 1990s marketing, but a self-aware moment of levity might have saved the day. Paging Gary Lineker…

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