Everyone loves a scoop of ice cream, but a new ad from Ontario-based brand Halo Top isn’t sitting well with some TTC riders.
At first glance, the wedding-themed poster — spotted on digital screens at stations and inside subway cars across the city — looks harmless enough: a smiling bride feeding ice cream to a man in a tux, presumably her new husband.
Look a little closer, though, and the scene changes: the bride’s bare foot is brushing against the leg of another man under the table. Beneath the image, the slogan reads, “So good, you don’t have to be,” meant to highlight Halo Top’s healthier take on ice cream. But critics say the ad’s message feels less like “cheating on your diet” and more like cheating on your wedding day.
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Halo Top’s Canadian account recently shared an Insta reel of the poster: “So good you don’t have to be… even on your commute? Did you spot us on the subway?”
Yup, commuters saw it, and they have thoughts.
“Promoting cheating on a wedding day?? Wow. God bless,” one user responded.
The message at the bottom of the ad reads, “Low sugar. High protein. Great taste. Being good has never been easier,” underscoring Halo Top’s health-conscious branding. Still, the way that message is delivered has struck some riders as tone-deaf.
Under another Insta post about the ad, users noted that the imagery implies a bride ‘cheating’ on her wedding day, and that she looks like she’s playing footsie with someone else.
One user wrote, “Why is this being normalized?” while a few seemed to justify the overall message, saying the tagline is about “[c]heating on your diet”, not your spouse.
“People make a big deal out of everything these days, it’s just a stupid add, move on!” one said.
Others got more explicit about the values of marriage and warned that embracing ads like this could spell trouble for society as a whole.
“The amount of people trying to justify the brides foot on another man who clearly isn’t her husband is shocking to me. This is why you guys have commitment issues and high divorce rates. What happened to the good old classy behaviour of staying true to one partner? I miss those days,” one user said.
Whether intentional or not, the campaign has drawn plenty of attention online — and, in the world of advertising, that may have been the goal all along.
