Farmers take notice. Actually, don’t. Why? Because it’s a rare farmer these days who actually milks a cow by hand. For you city folk, most cows are now milked by a machine that connects to the cow’s teats (yes, that’s what cow nipples are called) then automatically disconnects when the cow is finished giving milk. Anyway, that doesn’t seem to be relevant to Zippo and its agency, Pittsburgh-based Brunner, which advocate the use of the Zippo hand warmer prior to hand milking a cow.
Now that may well be great advice for those farmers still milking cows by hand…and the rest of the world who thinks that’s still how all cows are milked…but we have one small comment. While the farmer in this ad isn’t exactly using the open flame lighter in the barn while milking the cow, he does have the warmer in his pocket. Whether it produces any significant flame, we do not know. What we do know is that flame and methane gas – always present when cows are around – definitely do not mix well.
Yes, the ad is allegorical. Yes, the Zippo hand warmer is safe. But in this day and age of literal-minded cause group kooks, we wouldn’t be one bit surprised if some entity decided to lodge a complaint claiming this ad might somehow convince a random idiot to walk into a barn with a Zippo lighter (instead of the hand warmer) causing an entire herd of livestock to go up in flames.
And you know stranger things have happened.
