If it’s the one I’m thinking of it’s for the Video Professor (or something like that). You pay $6.95 shipping and handling because he just knows if you try his product you’ll come back for more.
I got curious about it late one night after seeing the commercial and searched for it online. I came across another website that claims the Video Professor is a scam. Supposedly, if you order the CDs you’ll later be charged $69.95 and sent more CDs. This keeps happening until you call to cancel.
I don’t know how accurate that is since the website I read it on was for a competitor.
I can tell just by watching his agonizing sales shpiel that “Video Professor” John Scherer is the kind of man who gives entrepreneurship a bad name. He looks like he’d be a danger to himself and others after a few drinks.
It’s not so much an ad that “thinks we’re stupid,” but there’s one for {TGIFriday’s/Chili’s/Applebee’s/TGIMcScratchy’s} that’s mind-bogglingly insulting.
Guy and girl are at said restaurant, and she is ordering. “I’ll have {whatever} for my first course, the chicken for my second, and the cheesecake for dessert.” Guy’s thoughts: “What does she think I am, a bank?” Then he sees the special meal deal on the menu, three courses for only $12.95. He brightens up. “I’ll have the same.”
I can barely even describe the many levels of insult at work here. :rolleyes:
Oh, I hate that one too! The part that really irritates me is when the woman puts a pie in the oven without a pan under it. Of course it’s going to drip all over the bottom of the oven, you idiot! :rolleyes:
Oo! Oo!
Wife wants the Glade plugin right next to her, so she goes and pulls it (and somehow the outlet) way over to the other side of the room, yanking electrical cord and destroying the drywall.
Then, da-da-DUM! Saved! By the new puff Glade thingie.
She sits and relaxes in a chair, reading a book by this strange new scent machine. While her husband fixes the wall. AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGG!!!
And earlier he just stood there while she destroyed the room!
It’s kind of fun, in a profoundly sick way, to analyse commercials for what market they’re targeting. The really late-night infomercial things are notorious for this: loose a gazillion pounds by taking this hella expensive pill! Become a millionaire in your spare time by becoming a slum lord!
I really, really hate the messages behind prime-time commercials though. Especially the ones where men are morons, kids are hellions and women are wise martyrs. My least favorite was for some credit card–I think–pushing all its wonderful bonus awards. To get this message across it showed a deadpan mother:
in a supermarket while her kids systematically reduce the place to rubble
filling the minivan with gas, with kids kicking out the windows and throwing pudding all over the interior
The tradeoff was Wise Mom made all those purchases with Credit Card X so they can afford to send the demon spawn the hell away to summer camp. She and Token Male Doofus wave cheerily as the bus departs, no doubt anticipating their wonderful savings going to pay for the trashed bus, medical costs for “torch the camp counselor” and butchered wildlife.
They don’t need a credit card. They need a 2x4 smacked upside their heads before their kids become serial killers by the third grade.
Great view of how advertisers see average families.
Woman is in the kitchen trying to decide between two packets of the same instant noodle meal, but while one is an other-brand microwavable version, this ad is pushing the one you prepared on the stovetop. So, Sliding Doors style, she’s mirrored on the screen but one of her takes the microwave, the other takes the stove. So she’s singing and dancing around the brightly lit kitchen, stirring the pot on the stove and having a great time… and then we’re seeing her blue-tinted face peering through the window on the microwave door, dull eyed with boredom as she watches it turn round and round… back to great lighting, bopping and dancing, and now she’s dishing it up into a bowl… back to blue lit kitchen where she’s burning herself as she tries to take the bowl of noodles out of the oven…
Stupid, stupid, stupid ad! Worthless load of crap. Anyone not smart enough to handle food from a microwave without burning themselves is certainly going to be challenged by the stovetop version! I hate this ad so much that I simply can’t recall what the actual product is. I’m so livid by the end that I can’t focus - is this what advertisers think of us?
Other ads I hate: Radio ad, two voices, first says “This weekend I stayed home and washed the car” and the second voice says “I cut a car in half!” The first voice says “Cool! I was thinking of hanging out with friends” and the second voice says “I was hanging out on a cliff - abseiling!” and then the voiceover guy announces you should join the SES and get some excitement in your life. W-T-F?! Join the State Emergency Service for the cool fun they have, cutting people from the wreckage of their cars and abseiling down cliffs to retrieve their broken bodies! I don’t know who came up with this ad, but the whole “Other people’s life threatening and fatal accidents are your playground!” concept is just WRONG.
Maybe the same advertising agency could do something for the penal guard demographic.
“Hey Fred, how’s work going?”
“Ah, you know, same ol-same ol. Growing more paper at the cubical farm. And you?”
“Oh, it’s going great! I got this broken arm busting up a riot between the white supremicists and the black gang, and I almost got shived by a con serving 25 to life for serial-raping nuns.”
“Wow, Bob, that sounds really great! Do you think I could join up?”
“Sure, Fred. We’re always looking for fresh blood. Just call 1-800-G0-2-PRSN.”
“I think I’ll do that, Bob. What was that number?”
“It’s 1-800-GO-2-PRSN.”
“Did you say 1-800-GO-2-PRSN?”
“I sure did, Fred. That was 1-800-GO-2-PRSN.”
“I’m going to go call right now. Say, my sixteen year old daughter is looking for an afterschool job. Do you think they’d have something for her?”
“I’m sure they can find her something in the the Violent Sex Offenders group, Fred.”
“Great! I’m sure she’ll be excited. Say, what was that number again?”
“It’s 1-800-GO-2-PRSN.”
How about the Clorox ad claiming if you don’t bleach your sheets, you’re diving into “Body Soil.” Then they add that you should use Clorox 2 for colored sheets, implying it too, has some defense against the plague of “body soil.”
My first question is, what, exactly, is body soil? Is it that minute decomposition happening to my skin, turning it to worm food? Are they implying that * I don’t bathe???* Or is it something else? A new product, perhaps.
Then there’s the issue of the secondary product that does basicly nothing, but must be used for safety’s sake to avoid a dreaded affliction, that doesn’t exist.
Ah, like the toothbrushes with the little rubber flanges that let you brush your tongue {cue computer animated goobies being dislodged from a giant tongue by the miracle of little rubber flanges, thus preventing the proud purchaser of said toothbrush from succumbing to the multiple ravages of bad breath, typhoid, brain fever and housemaid’s knee}. If I feel the need to brush my tongue, you mendacious charlatans, I can brush it perfectly adequately with my ordinary toothbrush, sans flanges.
I think most of the problem is that the advertisers and their agencies aren’t imbeciles - they’re clever men and women who have sold their souls to the devil in order to woo the stupid demographic: their ads may piss off the fine members of this board, who {for the most part} don’t belong to said demographic, but in all probability reach those whom they’re intended to reach.
I also hate the other version of this commercial, where some brat smacks the spoon out of the mom’s hand. I just want to slap that kid every time I see it. Teach your brat to behave, and you wouldn’t have this problem!
The U.S. Army commercials with that “Army of One” just grate on my nerves. Right, the U.S. military is so big on fostering individuality? Isn’t that the antithesis of what the military is all about?
The Sears commercials for washers and dryers in “designer shades” that “fit your personal style”. Og forbid you should have a washer and dryer that’s, gasp, white, because that would mean you are too boring to deserve to live.
Also, you need the “designer shade” washer and dryer so that, ten years from now, when you’re trying to sell your house, prospective buyers will go “Oh, look, this laundry room was remodeled in 2005”, much the way we do now with those hideous “avocado” and “harvest gold” appliances!
My least favorite is for a cold capsule, Tylenol Cold I believe. The spokeswoman very intensely describes why Tylenol Cold is the strongest, most potent cold medicine.
Why? Because it’s the only cold capsule that contains liquid.
Somehow the fact that the medicine is delivered in liquid form is makes it far more effective than any solid (or, I suppose we must also assume, gaseous) medicine. Never is any mention made of what the liquid is. Could be bat guano or deisel fuel. But dammit, it’s liquid so it must be good!