The media in Singapore is getting rather fond of puns. Have you read The Straits Times recently?

Because it’s saturated with headlines with wordplay. Bad wordplay. Let me illustrate by opening up The Sunday Times on Jan. 25, 2015. I bet I don’t even have to look very hard to find an example. Oh here we go.

Go, go, goma cream? Just stop. (Get it, get it?) Anyway, because the papers are saturated with punny headlines, it’s only natural that local copywriters follow suit and milk the Year of the Goat/ Sheep/ Ram for all its worth.

There are some very expected ones. Like this one by Cedele.

Okay. 喜气羊羊. I can live with that.

Then there are some which are slightly more “creative”. Like these by BreadTalk.

“Goat Year, Goat Luck”? Please. Clearly, BreadTalk didn’t put much thought into the sort of luck goats have. Because I did some research. And I found that most goats spend their lives getting grabbed at by kids with sticky fingers, and/ or getting milked by machines on a daily basis. Also goats typically die after 15 years. Goat luck indeed.

But BreadTalk didn’t just stop at that...

“Goat-ness” for the whole family. It keeps getting worse. But it’s okay. Just ignore it and be “Happy Goat Lucky”.

There’s also IKEA which came up this rather clever pun.

And proceeded to destroy all its good work by coming up with the most terrible pun of them all.

Clearly, someone at Ikea came up with this on a drunk night. Either that or someone from BreadTalk hacked into Ikea’s system. I’m not sure. But I really had more faith in the people who brought us the wonderful BookBook campaign.

There's only one thing to say with regards to these so-called creative efforts, which Lazada has put into words very well.

Yes, "Oh My Goat". I'm assuming that "Oh My Goat" has a different connotation from "Oh My God". From my critical observation, "Oh My God" is a euphemism for "sad and disappointing". Because I checked this so-called BIG CNY $ALE, was unimpressed by what was offered. A $6 discount for this WD portable hard drive? Sorry Lazada, but your deals, like the puns floating around, are meh.

However, if you really want to be punny over CNY, let me recommend some clothes with more tasteful puns which you can buy and wear for your respective reunion dinners. Your relatives will be impressed.

$23.50 from Temasek Clothings.

Okay I’ve come to the end of my post. If I were in the advertising industry, I might say something along the lines of “I hope creative teams can come up with taglines with less puns and more punch.”

Luckily I’m not. So I will end here. Goodbye!

Related article:

This is not a paid advertorial. BreadTalk is really trolling Mothership.

If you like what you read, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest updates.