Visine Wrings Fresh Tears from Fairy-Tale Captive

visine-kitchen.jpg

Mix the charm of The Elves and the Shoemaker with the Napoleonic Lilliputians of Gulliver’s Travels and you’ve got “Kitchen,” the print piece by JWT/NY for Johnson & Johnson’s Visine.

The visual relates a myth about how all those tears get inside a wee bottle of Visine. Look closely: tireless miniature men conduct tear-gathering work around the frozen face and body of a glassy-eyed woman of normal size. Cut onions litter the table before her; elsewhere, tiny labourers bear buckets. One leans over a giant funnel and pours the harvested fluid into a Visine container.

“Natural tears formula. Don’t ask how,” the piece reads, crimson scrawl on a well-worn hanky.

Dark and beguiling, like good fairy tales often are.

Picture of Steve Hall

Steve Hall

RECENT ARTICLES

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

I’m 38 and I just realized my Boomer parents don’t call me for advice — they call me to hear their own thoughts repeated back in a younger voice because somewhere in the last 5 years they stopped trusting their own judgment and my job isn’t to have answers anymore, it’s to make their answers sound valid, and I don’t know when that shift happened but I know exactly what it cost them to need it

I’m 38 and I just realized my Boomer parents don’t call me for advice — they call me to hear their own thoughts repeated back in a younger voice because somewhere in the last 5 years they stopped trusting their own judgment and my job isn’t to have answers anymore, it’s to make their answers sound valid, and I don’t know when that shift happened but I know exactly what it cost them to need it

Global English Editing

9 signs you’ve quietly become the most self-aware person in your social circle — and why it sometimes feels lonelier, not better

9 signs you’ve quietly become the most self-aware person in your social circle — and why it sometimes feels lonelier, not better

Global English Editing

People who have no close friends but seem socially successful often share these 9 traits that explain why they’re surrounded by people but known by no one

People who have no close friends but seem socially successful often share these 9 traits that explain why they’re surrounded by people but known by no one

Global English Editing

The loneliest sound in a retired person’s house isn’t silence — it’s the refrigerator cycling on at 2pm because when the house is that quiet your brain starts cataloguing every mechanical sound just to confirm you’re still inside a life that’s running

The loneliest sound in a retired person’s house isn’t silence — it’s the refrigerator cycling on at 2pm because when the house is that quiet your brain starts cataloguing every mechanical sound just to confirm you’re still inside a life that’s running

Global English Editing

I’m 66 and the biggest lesson I learned too late wasn’t about saving more money or traveling sooner – it was understanding that every time I said ‘I’m fine’ when I wasn’t, I was teaching people that my feelings didn’t require their attention

I’m 66 and the biggest lesson I learned too late wasn’t about saving more money or traveling sooner – it was understanding that every time I said ‘I’m fine’ when I wasn’t, I was teaching people that my feelings didn’t require their attention

Global English Editing

The toughest generation in history isn’t millennials navigating burnout or gen X surviving neglect — it’s the boomers who were handed a definition of resilience that meant you could break every bone in your body and still weren’t allowed to say it hurt

The toughest generation in history isn’t millennials navigating burnout or gen X surviving neglect — it’s the boomers who were handed a definition of resilience that meant you could break every bone in your body and still weren’t allowed to say it hurt

Global English Editing