We are at the beginning of the years 2010 and Air New Zealand, between two campaigns of very successful “safety videos”, allowed us to follow the adventures of Rico, its mascot.
Rico was a little animal of a nondescript race, who spoke an English full of pronunciation errors that made his words full of “involuntary” sexual allusions and interviewed celebrities for the airline. And one day he recorded a duet with Snoop Dogg! I let you listen and decipher the lyrics.
Unfortunately the political correctness killed Rico and his videos have disappeared from the Air New Zealand Youtube channel. An end in the worst taste that is because the last episode was none other than the one of the assassination of Rico that ended by a game to the Cluedo to unmask his assassin and to win a prize. For me this is where the bad taste was, not in Rico’s jokes. But I’m French and we all know that we don’t laugh at the same things as our Anglo-Saxon friends.
Rico had built up a real community of fans who did not appreciate this end. At the time, he was instrumental in helping Air New Zealand being known outside of its geographic area and his twitter account was also very funny and his twitter account was also very funny. I’m going to try to exhume his most beautiful videos to give them a second life here.
By the way, one day the Air New Zealand people saw that I was interacting a lot with Rico on Twitter and asked me for my address. A few weeks later I received a package from New Zealand that contained ….
