Jane Bradley: Wonka bars and baked potatoes on demand

You spot a new, 3D advert at the bus stop, featuring a large button which, in true Alice in Wonderland style, just screams “press me”.

You press it and the aroma of a fresh-from-the-oven slow-baked potato is wafted into the bus shelter, tantalising your hungry taste buds and those of other passengers around you.

Sounds like something from Willy Wonka’s factory, doesn’t it? In fact, when I first heard about this, I had to check the date to make sure it wasn’t 1 April.

But it wasn’t. In fact, the novel idea is part of a £1 million promotion of McCain Foods’s new microwaveable ready baked potatoes.

Commuters waiting for buses in a string of UK cities, including Glasgow, are soon to be faced with the prospect of real life “smell-O-vision” – or, more accurately, what should be called “smell-AD-vision”.

Shattering the magical myth, the technology geeks at McCain’s tell me the bus shelter posters contain a hidden heating element which warms the 3D jacket potato picture and releases the scent when a button is pressed.

The company, rather grandly, it insists the launch will “revolutionise baked potato eating in the UK”. A debatable claim – and one which raises the pertinent question of whether baked potato eating really needs revolutionising – but what it will undoubtedly do, is revolutionise advertising.

We’ve had the adverts which make sounds – we even have the mysterious world of augmented reality apps. For some reason, they don’t excite me.

But, what is exciting about this is that I truly believe this latest breakthrough sets us on the technological path to Wonka’s would-be protegee Mike Teavee’s favourite Television Chocolate machine soon becoming reality.

Mark my words. Within less than a decade, I will be able to reach right into my TV set and pull out a chocolate bar and eat it. Then my childhood dreams will be fulfilled.