Compare The Market Has Pushed Me To A Hatred Of Meerkats (Excluding Timon)

"But how can you hate Meerkats?" You ask.

SIMPLES.

That's fucking how.

Rawh! (I don't know how to spell that stupid noise)

I think everyone knows what is going on here. There probably isn't a single person in the whole of the United Kingdom who hasn't seen those Compare The Market/Compare The Meerkat adverts on television.

I think at first, I kind of liked the idea of a (presumably, but correct me if I'm wrong) Russian Meerkat, wearing a smoking jacket and talking about how people keep going on his site used for comparing meerkats, looking for cheap car insurance. Admittedly, I never understood why he was complaining, because people going to this site generates more traffic for him, even if it is accidental.

I'd like to make some statement like, "But now, they have taken it too far!" But I believe Compare The Market had taken it too far by about maybe the third advert, so there's nothing to report. This is less about them having done something really bad or lame that has made me hate meerkats, but more the list of things caused by these stupid adverts.

I live in a town that is heavily considered to be a tourist attraction for some unknown reason. Because of this, we have a lot of shops dedicated purely to stocking up on cheap tat and useless gifts. In fact, we pretty much have an entire road dedicated to shops just like that. Again, I want to say that I had 'recently noticed', but it's less of a recency issue, more of a frequency thing. But yeah, these shops are all now infested with hundreds of meerkat related 'gifts'. From stuffed toys, to 'Grow-Your-Own'. Key rings, to place mats. I heart meerkat pens, t-shirts. There is literally fucking everything.

The same street that is full mainly of 'grockle shops' is also rammo with arcades. You'll never guess what each of these arcades has at least one claw machine packed with! Well maybe you will guess; it was meerkats. They've even got the variations of different meerkats in the adverts, like the ones wearing the tunics from the meerkat war in one of the adverts. I even saw one wearing stereotypical desert wear (I would name the stuff, but I don't know what it's called) from the advert where they're on a camel or something.

Even the shops that sell regular things like beds somehow manage to pull meerkats into their advertising plans. One shop has a three foot tall meerkat on a bed, with a fluorescent star with "Simples!" written on it. What is the fucking relevence of that? It's not even slightly relatable! What is this bed shop trying to say is "Simples"? Buying a bed? Putting a giant meerkat on a bed? Jumping on the band wagon and stealing some one else's advertising idea, and not even slightly adapting it at all? What?! What the fuck is so fucking "Simples" that it warrants you spending an estimated £30 on a stuffed meerkat?

I suppose this can't be entirely pinned on Compare The Meerkat Market, what with most of the merchandise stuff being just blatent attempts by shitty toy companies to jump on to what is currently popular.

Well except for a few things I have seen, which can undoubtedly be seen as Compare The Market milking this stinky little meerkat-mania as much as possible. The biggest, and most offensive example of this being "A Simples Life: The Life and Times of Aleksandr Orlov".

Yes, a book. A fucking autobiography written by a fictional meerkat. You know what's even worse about that? It got fucking good reviews. The only thing I can find that I enjoy on the product page is 7 people tagging it as "awful" and 6 people tagging it as "flogging a dead meerkat".

What reason is there for this book to exist. He is a meerkat wearing clothes who has a catchphrase. That isn't even nearly enough substance to write a life story.

I think a reviewer called "Sarcosuchus" summed it up perfectly:

"When our grandchildren are living in a toxic desert and fighting each other for water, and they ask us what we were doing at the time of the great extinction, when the oil was running out and we should have been looking into alternative energy sources, we can produce this, make a funny noise and say "Simples!". And they will punch us in the face, again and again and again."

Well anyway; a real meerkat doesn't wear a smoking jacket, say "Simples", make a stinky little noise or advertise Compare The Market.

A real meerkat generally wears nothing, occasionally pausing to wear a grass hula skirt, says "Hakuna Matata", hangs out with a stinky warthog and just generally enjoys life.

Take a lesson from Timon, Aleksandr.