When faced with a script for a packet of little round chocolate balls, Bouffant director Erik van Wyk was inspired to create a work of engineering that functioned entirely on the weight of one single Tumble.

Created by ad agency Promise as part of the relaunch of Cadbury Tumbles, the spot resulted in the creation of a large Rube Goldberg-type machine with multiple levels and chain reactions, all of which functioned on the motion of a single Tumble chocolate ball.

The machine itself was conceptualised and created by Erik along with the special effects team of Manny Kitely from Brocomm and Graham Press from Creature Shop, and took an intensive three weeks to plan followed by five gruelling weeks of construction. This machine not only had to be able to function, it also had to be visually suitable to form the basis of a 60-second commercial.

In order to add to the credibility of the machine, it had to run on a real Tumble - which required that each Tumble had to be exactly round in shape and had to be precise in weight.In order to showcase the ingenuity of the machine - Erik created a seamless one taker which meant that the dog had to come into the shot and steal the Tumble at precisely the correct moment in the spot.

The result is a fun spot that has the viewer entranced until the pivotal moment when the dog steals the Tumble and the moment!

Greg Banach, head of Cadbury Chocolate Marketing, says: “This was an extremely technical script that was exceptionally time-consuming and challenging for the production team to execute. The outcome supersedes our expectations; this is an ad that captures the imagination and consumers want to watch it more than once to try and catch every detail.”

Issued by Bouffant