If you find oversimplified condoms amusing, then you’ve never seen LifeGuard Man:

About a year and a half ago, I traveled to Uganda and saw the above yellow mascot all over the place (along with the slogan “Life is Precious, Defend it Well!”). In Uganda, ads are painted onto the walls and fronts of almost every street-side market, mostly to advertise powdered milk and cell phone cards. But this little feller kept popping up, as did a series of billboards with a young Ugandan woman’s smiling face and a slogan saying that she was saving herself for marriage.

I can’t help but remember those ads when I read Dan’s post; Pronto condoms are marketed in South Africa, and there’s a good reason. It’s one thing to be too stupid to figure out a condom; it’s another to try and reduce barriers of entry, be those ignorance or unwillingness to rubber up, in battling an AIDS epidemic that just won’t go away. If that takes something as goofy as the crack-and-swipe condom to cover even a few hundred more dicks, I’m all for it. (By the way, Uganda is reportedly better off in terms of AIDS prevention; I suppose LifeGuard Man beat down the Trojan Man in a good ol’ fashioned jerk-off.)