How a stop-motion alien campaign turned instant potato into advertising legend.

For Mash, Get Smash: The Martians Who Sold Britain Convenience

As I was researching this brilliant animation, I was drawn in by the strong marketing, too. I remember the adverts and laughing along, and even now, if you say, “For mash, get…,” to someone my age, they will no doubt say…Smash.

When instant mashed potatoes first appeared in British kitchens, it was hardly glamorous. A packet of dehydrated flakes promising convenience, not romance. Useful, but not the sort of product anyone expected to love.

What changed everything wasn’t the mash itself, but the decision to sell it through science fiction absurdity: a group of giggling Martians watching humans peel potatoes as if they were witnessing medieval torture.

At a time when food advertising often leaned on wholesome families and warm domesticity, Smash did something far stranger. It made the audience laugh. And in doing so, it became unforgettable.

The decision to animate

The Smash campaign, launched in the early 1970s, was created by the advertising agency Boase Massimi Pollitt and brought to life through stop-motion puppetry. Instead of traditional drawn animation, the adverts used small, carefully crafted Martian figures with oversized heads, metallic costumes, and voices that sounded both childlike and alien.

This was animation as comedy theatre. The Martians weren’t really mascots in the Tony the Tiger mould. They weren’t even aspirational or friendly. They were observers, outsiders, laughing at human foolishness from the comfort of their futuristic world. For me, that perspective was the genius. Smash wasn’t selling potatoes. It was a relief from labour.

A story built on ridicule

The narrative was always the same, and always perfect: the Martians would watch a scene of humans doing things the “old way” — peeling, boiling, mashing — and they would dissolve into helpless laughter.

They peel them with their metal knives!
They boil them for twenty minutes!
They even mash them by hand!

Then came the punchline, delivered with smug satisfaction:

For mash, get Smash.

The humour worked because it wasn’t cruel. It was playful mockery, the sort Britain has always enjoyed, particularly when aimed at its own domestic routines. The campaign suggested that convenience wasn’t laziness; it was progress.

Why the puppets worked

The choice of stop-motion puppetry gave the adverts a physical charm. These weren’t sleek cartoon aliens. They were tangible, slightly awkward, and therefore funnier. Their stiff movements, blinking eyes, and rubbery mouths made them feel like toys come to life.

In an era before CGI, this kind of animation carried a particular magic. You could sense the craft behind it: the tiny costumes, the careful frame-by-frame movement, the tactile reality of the Martian control room.

It made the adverts feel like miniature films rather than disposable commercials.

Television, repetition, and national memory

Once the Martians hit British television, they became a cultural fixture. The adverts ran throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, repeated often enough that their rhythm became part of everyday language.

Children quoted them. Adults quoted them. The phrase “For mash, get Smash” entered the strange museum of British advertising catchphrases, alongside “Tell Sid” and “Beanz Meanz Heinz”.

What’s remarkable is how little the campaign needed to change. The joke stayed the same, and the audience never seemed to tire of it. The Martians weren’t selling novelty. They were selling a shared recognition: yes, peeling potatoes is a bit ridiculous.

Cultural impact beyond the kitchen

The Smash Martians have never really disappeared. They remain one of the most fondly remembered British advertising campaigns of the 20th century, frequently referenced in retrospectives, comedy sketches, and discussions of advertising’s golden age.

Part of their longevity lies in how odd they were. These weren’t generic mascots. They were surreal. Slightly unnerving. Genuinely alien.

And yet, they were also deeply British: sarcastic, observational, amused by human effort. In a sense, they were sitcom characters in space helmets.

The campaign proved that animation in advertising didn’t have to be cute. It could be weird. It could be satirical. It could even be a little cruel, so long as the audience was laughing too.

Advertising as science fiction

What Smash achieved, quietly but decisively, was to use animation not just as branding, but as a genre. These adverts weren’t simply selling a product; they were parodying modernity itself.

The Martians represented the future: effortless, automated, superior. Humans represented the past: sweaty, manual, absurd.

It was consumerism reframed as evolution. Instant mash wasn’t just easier — it was inevitable.

That’s a surprisingly big idea for a packet of potatoes.

Financial success, built through laughter

Smash became one of the most recognisable convenience foods in Britain, and the Martians were central to that success. While exact sales figures from the era are difficult to pin down publicly, the campaign is widely credited with transforming Smash from a bland pantry item into a household name.

The adverts didn’t just increase awareness — they created affection. People didn’t buy Smash because it was delicious. They bought it because the Martians made them smile.

That is branding at its most effective: not persuasion, but association for the whole family.

Fun Facts

First, the Smash Martians were created using stop-motion puppetry rather than traditional cartoon animation, giving them a distinctive tactile feel.

Second, the campaign ran for over a decade, making it one of the longest-lasting and most recognisable animated advertising series in Britain.

Third, the Martians consistently ranked in polls of the UK’s best-loved TV adverts, proving that even instant mashed potato can achieve cultural immortality with the right aliens attached.

Do they still matter?

Over fifty years on, the Smash Martians remain a reminder that animation in advertising can be more innovative than we give it credit for.

In a world now saturated with sleek CGI mascots and algorithm-driven campaigns, the Martians’ handmade oddness feels almost radical. You can see the fingerprints in the puppets, the humour in the writing, the confidence in letting a product be silly.

They didn’t promise escape or aspiration as advertising tries so hard to do now. They promised something simpler: that modern life could be made a little easier, and that we could laugh at ourselves along the way.

And for a group of giggling aliens selling instant mash, that’s quite an achievement, or maybe I am just easily please :)