1F1’s Produits de Beauté 1F1 were asked to come up with pictures and some advertising copy – in French – for some personal grooming products. They were encouraged to invent new products if possible and also told that puns (des jeux de mots) are often a help when devising slogans…

“Un comprimé qui vous comprend” – “the pill that understands you” Brilliant!

“A Girl’s New Best Friend…”

Are your feet really “the end”?...And not just the end of your legs?

Did you know that “pellicule” (dandruff) also means “camera film”? It’s because camera film has flakes of silver nitrate on it, which darken when exposed to light and a dandruffy head has flakes of, well….

The slogan at the bottom unfortunately hasn’t scanned well. It reads, “Ne vivez pas crêpelé”, which pretty much means, “Don’t live frizzy!”

Some of the copy is missing from this; it should read, “Des cheveux de cheval à des cheveux chouchou”, which means, “From horse hair to cute hair.” Less snappy in English but nicely alliterative in French!

Ding dong! Calling out the sparkles in your lips….

I think this is my favourite: a pun on eyebrows (sourcils), the wax (cire) you might apply to them and a tongue twister, explaining that Susie is having trouble (des soucis) with her eyebrows

Whilst we’re on the subject of unruly eyebrows – and puns – I liked the idea of these special eyebrow scissors – Des Sourcil-Ciseaux

Still on the subject of unwanted facial hair (seems to be a bit of an obsession with both boys and girls in this class!), here’s another depilatory product. You can see which areas it’s aimed at…. “Avoir la pêche” means to be healthy; we might say “in the pink”. Literally it means a peachy complexion. The idea here is that, while hoping you might have a ‘peachy’ complexion, you still need to guard against that nightmare of the hirsute: Peach-fuzz! (poil is fur or animal hair)

More puns: do you end up shouting at (engûeler) your nails (ongles)? And nice assonance: thick, you might say, gloopy, (onctueux) nail varnish!

Bit difficult to tell what’s going on in this picture, unless it’s an impressionist version of the inside of Shane McGowan’s mouth…but the message is clear enough: “Good-bye to black teeth! White teeth overnight will make you smile!”

And here, finally, is a genuinely new product to the market: back scratching liquid – protects against itching for 10 hours!