Any of the as seen on TV products where they point out the “hassle” of the product they are replacing. For example, there’s one with the pot that has holes in the lid that takes the place of a collander. In the beginning, the narrator is saying things like, “Tired of cooking spaghetti and making a mess, scalding yourself, etc.” and it’s accompanied by a woman who is so incompetent she can’t pour spaghetti into a collander. She burns herself and drops the spaghetti, or pours the spaghetti on the side of the collander and the whole thing flips over spraying pasta everywhere. I mean, seriously, is anyone that stupid?
Any ad for cleaning products, child care products or femine hygine products. Or paper towels. Or investing/business services. Or cars.
When I need to clean something up, I just use whatever is around and looks like it’ll do the trick. If I need to buy cleaning products, I just go and get them, without agonizing for hours over the relative merits of Lemon Fresh Pine-Sol vs. Orange Blast Lysol, Regular vs. Ultra-Triple Quilted. Although I must say that the Pine-Sol spokeswoman (you all know who I’m talking about) has made quite a career for herself.
My girlfriend is quite capable to make her own choices, and I don’t have kids, so that explains those two.
As for car ads, who the hell will be sitting around watching TV and see a Ford ad, only to be overcome with a sudden, irresistable urge to buy an F-150? I honestly cannot imagine automobile ads swaying someone’s vehicular choices.
Fanta
I cannot stand the stupid Fanta song. When that ad is done being played every two seconds I will be happy.
I agree - very clever. But in general I don’t like the check-card commercials.
I agree. The first time I saw it I was thinking No way this is a real commerical. I has to be a parody of something!.
But nope.
It was real. :rolleyes:
I love the pasta pot one too, especially the look of self loathing and “Why did God lead me to this place of suffering?” look on the woman’s face when she spills the pasta. (OTOH, I got one of those as a gift and use it all the time simply because it’s easier than using a collander.)
Slight hijack (but I opened the thread, so)- two commercials that I couldn’t believe didn’t generate more controversy were the ones that premiered when the first SURVIVOR was on. Both are tie-ins to the show and revolved around two young inept guys in the jungle. In one, guy one is bitten on the inner thigh by a snake and his buddy has to suck out the poison; an attractive girl jogs by just in time to see the buddy’s head in front of the other guy’s crotch and hear him making sucking sounds. The second one is a take-off on the leach scene from STAND BY ME and when the attractive girl jogs by it’s to see the guy with his hand moving in his underwear. Both times I thought “THIS IS ON PRIMETIME NETWORK TV AND THEY WON’T EVEN LET WILL HAVE A BOYFRIEND ON W&G?”
As memory serves the ads were for Nike, though exactly how faux-llatio and ersatz wanking were expected to sell shoes (“Hey honey, that guy who looks like he’s gettin’ a gay knob polishing reminds me- I wanna pay $180 for some cross trainers”). Of course I also never understood how Robert Vaughn or some of the other washed up celebrities can convince people to use lawyer’s offices; otoh, I did once buy Church’s Chicken strictly as an appreciation for them using LaWanda “Aunt Esther” Page in their “gotta love it!” ads.
Jack LaLanne is currently advertising a juicer whose claim to fame is that it has the largest chute on the market. “You don’t have to waste all that time cutting up the fruit and vegetables- you’ll just have your juice right there!” It’s twice the price of most other juicers. It takes two seconds to slice an apple into three parts- I’m one of the world’s worst oversleepers and even I can afford two seconds more than I can afford the extra $75 (if I were buying a juicer in the first place).
Oh brother, this has been a beef of mine for years. If you’re in the market for a car, aren’t you pretty much going to bone up on every car out there, test drive several and buy the one you think is the best deal and right for you? No no, you don’t need to because you saw one in a commercial with a DVD player in back. :rolleyes: I don’t actually understand WHY there ARE car commercials!
Those commericals from the Mormons (or any Christian organization).
;j
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Car ads that are narrated by a guy with a voice like a growling buzz saw. Gee, that guy sounds so butch. If I drive that car, nobody’ll guess that I’m gay. And it’s gotta be some kinda chick magnet. Gotta run right out and buy one. Or two, just to be sure. And really gotta practice that voice.
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Any commercial for a prescription drug, especially when they don’t say *what the drug is for! * Gee, that stuff looks great! Gotta tell my doc to write me a scrip for some! Oh yeah man! Huh, what side effects?
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And then there’s that moronic doofus on the H.H. Gregg commercials.
Prescription drug commercials have a logic, even if it’s obscure sometimes. If they tell you what the drug does, they have to list the side effects. If they don’t tell you what the drug does, they don’t have to list the side effects. This is federal law, I believe.
Commercials for anything used to clean the kitchen floor. Invariably, the ad shows a mop, saturated with the advertised product, cutting a sparkling clean swath through an absolutely filthy, dirty kitchen floor on which the filth measures at least 1/4 inch thick. The thing is, when the camera angle widens, you can tell from the look of the rest of the kitchen that this is one of those trade-mark perfect kitchens in which dirt is not permitted. How do the floors in these meticulously spotless kitchens get so disgusting?
The one they show with all the hippies on a hillside drinking coke to make the world a better place.
I hate any commercial that ooohs and ahhhs the virtues of a wax or hair remover over razors because you won’t get nicks and cuts and then immediately goes to a scene where some woman in a bathrobe is hacking at her leg with a razor like she’s caught in some parallel horror movie universe where that’s the acceptable way to shave. No WONDER she has nicks and cuts!
I can’t relate because…who shaves like that?
FireVixen, that’s actually of a piece with the complaint about the Pasta Pro-type commercials above. In Commercial World, everyone is so completely incompetent at ordinary, everyday tasks that it’s kind of amazing that the Powers That Be there trust their people with sharp or hot objects at all.
there is a pasta strainer ad
it says something like:
hate slimey ravioli!? $nameofproduct makes perfect tortilini!
gah! does that mean it makes slimey ravioli too but they are hopeing the tortilini will make up for it?
Exactly. NYC is the center of the space-time continuum and its related wormholes.
What’s really wrong with these commericals is that these people are so not New Yorkers. Bland, soft spoken, and devoid of ethnicity. They reek of Connecticut and upper Westchester.
The lastest incarnation has the upwardly mobile mother and father and their precocious yet socially delayed pre-teen. They’re all standing within a yard of each other at breakfast and they all have their back turned to each other, each reading their favorite section. Talk to each other fer chrissakes!
Oh, and the preteen tells us all she reads the Gray Lady to find out what’s happening on the web. Yeah, that’s real tech-savvy: relying on print media to tell you about the internet.
I’d also like to add car commercials with pop music that incorporate the lyrics of the song with the exciting offers from participating dealers. You know, Pink sings about getting the party started and the announcer cuts in to tell us “You better get your party started with the Hyundai Elantra!”
I am vexed by the invention of the pain relief tabs that do not reguire you swallow them with a glass of water. The ad takes great pains to convince you that water is scarce and terribly hard to find when you need to swallow a pill.
I can’t imagine anyone watching that, outside of those wandering heat stricken through Death Valley, empathizes with the manufactured problem the ad purports to solve.
I just have to say that that was one of the funniest things I have ever read. It brought tears to my eyes.
Not to mention the nasty goldfish-in-the-mouth incident in the very first one of these I ever saw. Bleah.