Stephen McGinty: Creme eggs release the goo – but trap me in moral unease

AM I alone in brooding on the plight of the Cadbury Creme egg? Surely you must have seen the current run of television adverts in which these little fellows, in their tin foil coats of many colours, embark on gruesome acts of self-harm, the equivalent of confectionery suicide. For example, there is the egg who fires himself from a cannon head first into a wall; the depressive who rides a popped champagne cork into the ceiling or the character who attempts to pole-vault into a blender.

Now Cadbury's attempts to get around these violent acts of demise by telling the public that the little eggs, weary of life, are not actually killing themselves, but are embarking on a joyous act in which they "release the goo", so runs the slogan, which, as they emit little whimpers of pleasure has its own slightly grubby connotations. So which it is it to be: self-murder or the sin of Onan? I would argue that it has to be the former, tragic though this is for the little mites.

Look at the evidence, Cadbury's have anthropomorphised the eggs so they can march, ponder, scheme and bark commands at each other. The white fondant and yellow fondant, which makes the yolk, have clearly combined and evolved into a sense of self, which can make decisions. They must know that by leaping in front of the crushing steel balls of an executive toy they are hastening their own demise. Cadbury's has also adopted a sinister slogan: "You'll miss me when I'm gone".

In fact, I've taken to reading the adverts as a desperate bid to escape on their own terms, even into the arms of oblivion, the terrible fate that awaits them when they fall into our clutches. Think about it: they don't appear to wish to be eaten, they are not leaping into the mouths of delighted children, which would at least lend a purpose to their destruction and illustrate their natural life-cycle – "laid" at a rate of 1.5 million a day at the Bourneville factory in Birmingham, wrapped in their foil jackets then crunched between the pre-teen molars of sticky-fingered kids. Instead they are fleeing us.

The most sinister advert is where an entire army of the faithful is lined up naked each on top of their own mousetrap, waiting for the barked command of their illustrious leader to instruct them to trigger the trap and so herald them to their doom. This is Jonestown for confectionery, minus the Kool-Aid.

Now feel free to step in and exclaim in your best Michael Winner accent, "calm down dear, it's only a commercial". But if it is one designed to whet the appetite of this viewer then they have failed.

I fear I maybe alone in my response. Everyone else appears to take ghoulish delight in the flowing yolk and chocolate shrapnel. Between New Year's Day and Easter Sunday, Cadbury will sell 200 million in the UK alone, or the equivalent of three for every man, woman and child. Although Cadbury introduced its first creme-filled egg in 1923, the brand that we know and consume with gusto was not launched until 1971, and advertised on television for the first time, four years later. Since then they have become an international success with 100 million sold abroad, mainly in America, Australia and New Zealand. Curiously the American eggs, sold by Hershey's, are roughly ten per cent smaller in size than their European and Antipodean cousins.

Frankly, someone else can buy my share for this year I have embarked on a boycott. I shall not be biting the top off, licking out the creme then eating the chocolate remains as 53 per cent of you do, nor shall I be biting straight in, the approach favoured by 20 per cent of the population, and as for the 16 per cent who use their finger to scrape out the goo, they should be ashamed of themselves. I think it is best to draw a veil over the warped manner in which the remaining 11 per cent consume their eggs.