Swedish chainsaw “do not stop with hands or genitals”
http://www.thatsrich.com/manual.htm
Now thats a instruction manual:)
I once bought a sushi knife imported from Japan, with a label reading “Do not put in children”.
(Must have lost something in the translation) 
Okay, the part that wigs me out about all this is the “To extinguish, carefully blow out flame to prevent eye injury. Do not snuff” portion.
WTF?
It would seem to me that the use of a snuffer would HAVE to be safer than the possibility of hot, atomized, breath-born wax particles. Can somebody clue me in on when (and HOW) snuffers became deemed a litigious liability?
As an aside - thanks, particlewill; your thread prompted me to retrieve and light my own wax stick of death for personal enjoyment. ‘Mountain spruce’, Mmmmmm.
And of course, to get that title properly I had to pick up and look at the bottom of my already-burning, improperly-trimmed, non-heat-resistant-container-mounted pyrotechnic device. Warnings - HA!
- Dave
Sounds like we’re all fans of Bill Evengal, eh?
Well, those packets are also used in some food containers, so I can see how there might be a good reason for the warning. My bag of instant ramen today contained the following:
1 plastic pack of dried noodles
1 plastic pack of dried onions
1 plastic pack of miso paste
3 plastic packs of assorted sauces
1 plastic pack of silica gel marked “do not eat”
In this case, I’m actually glad the notice was there.
As for the non-food warning, it’s probably cheaper for the gel manufacturer to just make one package and ship it to everone rather than tracking which package goes where.
–sublight.
Why the hell would you eat those? Hey, I eat everything I find in my shoes.
From our bottle of baby powder…
Not me! I blow a big puff of it into the air, and walk thru it.
[sub]At least I did till my wife brought in lawyers.[/sub]
Well Duh! Duh Duh Duh! Double Duh!
Kinda related:
When I was in halls for the first year of uni we used to get some wonderfully worded warning signs in the communal areas. They tended to read:
“Would the cooks using this facility please refrain from dripping candle wax on the surfaces, as it entails more work for our cleaners.”
The best one by far though was a sign put on the door to the shower room:
“TALC HAZARD!!! Please refrain from spilling talc onto the tile floors as this may result in slippage and injury!”
Had me in stiches for weeks at the thought of some reckless talc fiend deliberately sprinkling the floor with talc in order to injur the unwary.
I love the commercial that shows some campers fighting a bear for a tupperware container of salad. The disclaimer reads “Do not attempt.” Yeah OK, I won’t fight a 1500 pound bear just because you warned me not to. Thanks so much for the warning!
Quite a lot of people snuff them out using their fingers & pinching the end of the wick - they usually lick their fingers first to do this. It looks quite scary the first time that you see if done, but, if you are quick (which is the important part…), it doesn’t hurt.
Obviously if someone did this slowly & hesitantly & burnt their fingers, they could sue…
oh, with respect to warnings…I still love Jack Batty’s “warning cape does not enable user to fly…” sig line (well that’s what you get for picking up the stylish black cape…if only you’d picked up the red one next to it in the cloakroom…)
I love the caution “Caution: this toy is a marble.”
Can’t get more basic than that.
You know what makes it especially funny - it was actually printed on the box for a Superman costume.
This seems like a “duh”, today in the 2Ks, but I bet it wasn’t always. Virtually every recipe for something to be baked, or instructions on a box of mix, starts out, “Preheat oven…” It seems like a no-brainer, but I wonder how many cakes came out looking like sidewalk chunks before cookbook editors realized that saying, "Mix together blah with blah, add blah and bake at 350 for 20 minutes didn’t explicitly tell people they had to preheat the oven, instead of turning it on at the same time they put the pan in.
My apologies if this has already been stated; I haven’t read the entire thread. Also, my mom likes to tell the anecdote about liquid dish soap. When it first came on the market, people thought the dishes didn’t have to be rinsed, because the soap didn’t leave a visible residue the way powdered soap did. Scrambled eggs a la Palmolive. Blaugh.
As I was checking for a warning label on the bottom of my candle…
I got a third degree burn on my palm.
I came across one a while back for an ice cream bar that read (paraphrasing as best I can recall): “This product may be extremely cold. Allow to warm slightly before eating to prevent sticking to lips and tongue.”
It was upon reading that that I lost the last shred of my faith in humanity.
This one’s been going around for years. Does anyone have a source cite?
To be printed on every product, street corner, skywritten:
WARNING: THE ULTIMATE RESULT OF LIFE IS DEATH! THERE IS NO ESCAPING THIS REALITY. IF YOU DO ANYTHING TO CAUSE OR ACCELERATE THIS PROCESS YOU WILL BE DEEMED TO BE UNFIT FOR LIFE AND THUS INELIGIBLE (AS WILL AS YOUR SURVIVORS) FOR ANY COMPENSATION AS A RESULT OF YOUR OWN ACTIONS.
Shit, better than any legalese and I’m not charging a cent for it. The world would be a better place if things could be stated so simply.
O
What? Do you know how long it takes to fillet them by hand?
Here’s yer sine…
It may be an urban legend, but a nurse friend told me she heard a story about a woman who got some contraceptive jelly. She came back to the doctor and asked for some that was grape flavored, because she couldn’t stand the kind she got, even on toast.
In all seriousness, a friend of mine (35 years old) died this summer from complications after he caught himself on fire trying to light a propane grill. It exploded in his face.