What your pet would look like dressed as a celebrity

PET owners are often weirdly fascinated by the idea of dressing up their cats and dogs. Well, let's take that concept to the extreme and dress them up as celebrities.

From left to right, you'll see Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Audrey Hepburn and Jack Sparrow.

STOP showing us those photos of your cat dressed in a tiny sweater.

Those pics don't impress us anymore, because now we've seen cats and dogs dressed up as world-famous celebrities. The game has changed.

There's a dog with the classic bowl-shaped Bieber haircut, a cat sporting Lady Gaga's favourite facial expression and even a mouse dressed as Queen Elizabeth.

The images appear on the packaging of a British chocolate brand called ChocStars, which arrived in Australia several months ago.

ChocStars co-founder Richard O'Connor told news.com.au the "light chocolate" is meant to be given as a gift. The back of every package has a "To" and "From" section for that reason.

"It's something you give to a friend," Mr O'Connor said. "It's a chocolate which is also a gift card. Rather than just buying a piece of paper, you get chocolate as well."

The Queen, Justin Bieber, Psy and Sherlock Holmes.

The brand's co-founders, Mr O'Connor and Birgitte Hovmand, also run an organic chocolate business called Chocolate and Love. The idea for ChocStars came to Mr O'Connor rather spontaneously.

"I went to a show and I saw this artist who'd made these images. They're arresting. You know, you stop," Mr O'Connor said. "What I love about them is they show you how human cats and dogs are."

Public figures are often caricatured in the media, but Mr O'Connor reckons these animal pics trump the cartoons we see in magazines and newspapers.

"Yes, it's a cartoon, what's so special about it?" he said. "The thing about the dog and cat one is it's clever, it makes you laugh."

Celebrity parodies aren't as common as you might expect in the marketing world. The threat of legal action bothers many companies, but Mr O'Connor says there's just "a line you have to get right".

Incidentally, Mr O'Connor's favourite ChocStar is the Queen.

"Makes me laugh every time."

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