I’d like to know the Straight Dope on this one. Supposedly, “criminis” were a specialty mushroom that no one really bought. Until someone noticed that if you let them grow really large, you can grill them and get excitingly large mushrooms. But they had to have an excitingly new name. So the “Portobello” was born.
Then, to add insult to injury, when the criminis still weren’t selling well, they got relabeled as “Baby Bellas.” So the things I buy at the grocery store are really “Small versions of the overgrown crimini” … or … “criminis.” Riiiiight…
Me too… what is IPA in the context of windshield washer fluid?
However, I can see a value to a “summer” wwf if it’s got extra bug-dissolving properties. If nothing else, it’ll be different than the pink winter stuff, which IS important as it won’t freeze when it hits the glass.
Any number of products / devices / whatever will - the marketing implies with the subtlety of a brickbat - make one less objectionable to the opposite sex. This will enable the flowering of one’s own social and stylistic talents, leading to wealth, fame, and endless dates with killer hotties.
How did we ever manage without advertising? :rolleyes:
First, it was a way of avoiding negative-sounding words. "No, consumers are too stupid to tolerate ads that say “No Fat!”, or “Contains No Preservatives!”. Those are negative words, you see. “Free” is such a more attractive alternative.
Then we got really crazy. Things are now advertised as being -free of things that have never been in the product since the dawn of time. Classic example is Chloresterol-Free. Used to advertise plant-derived products. Even those heavy in vegetable fats that are readily converted to cloresterol in the human body.
[Nitpick] Actually, it does *kind of *mean something, but it’s still all market-speak. The pro-vitamin of fucking pantothenic acid is fucking panthenol. This isn’t even a fucking vitamin yet, and it won’t turn into one by you sticking it on your head (you’d have to eat it), but apparently it makes your hair shiny. [/Nitpick]
That wouldn’t sound good in the shampoo commercials. It sounds like crap. But pro-vitamin? That sounds like some extra super vitaminy shit.
Actually, though, if I’m not mistaken, a pre-vitamin is in fact an intermediate step from a pro-vitamin to a vitamin. So not only is a pro-vitamin not even a fucking vitamin yet, it’s not even a fucking pre-vitamin yet.
The big bag of sugar that’s no longer five pounds.
The container of ice-cream that’s no longer a half-gallon
The bag of coffee that’s no longer a pound.
The candy-bar that’s a skosch thinner or shorter than it used to be.
I understand rising prices. It’s a fact of life.
Just raise the price, fer crying out loud! You’re screwing with my recipe portions!
[sub]Note to self: If invited for dinner, do not let Bosda cook.[/sub]
Another one I hate is the unmarketing ad. You know the one. “All those other guys tell you to drink this or eat that and you’ll be popular and sexy and rich and powerful, but you know it’s all a crock. Don’t let those other jerks fool you. Just do what you wanna do. Oh, and drink Sprite.”
Or the artsy-fartsy, non-sequitur ads for fashion and fragrances. The ones that show some contrived, often surreal mini-movie where some girl loses her floppy hat to a sudden gust of summer breeze and it flies off a tall bridge where the camera follows it down as it heads towards the road below where some dashing fellow grabs it, takes a whiff, then drives hell bent for leather to find the girl that lost it, and when he does they almost-kiss, then it cuts to a product shot and some girl whispers, “Escape,” for apparently no reason, because not until the very end do you realize that it’s an ad for a diamond pendant that, upon reflection, you saw the woman wearing for about half a second.
And don’t get me started on skin care products. Between splashing your face with a vertical wall of water, critical, life-altering ingredients inexplicably encased in ice cubes being and being dropped into a highball glass that allegedly takes your skin from its current, just-exhumed-for-autopsy condition to the state it was in while you were still in the womb, to the miraculous resurrection of dry and brittle plant matter with just one dab of moisturizer and the implication that your skin would turn into a dried up, sun-cracked riverbed if not for the use of these products, there’s just too much complete and utter nonsense going on in these ads.
Small dumbass things I see:
That package of premium chocolate in the supermarket? Hand-made by Swiss master chocolatiers, every one of them. Very slowly and carefully, using only specialized Master Chocolatier utensils, lovingly chiseled into individual squares by the sheer love of chocolate.
That pasta sauce, too – the whole lot of it is made by one little old Sicilian grandmother from a secret recipe that’s been in her family since Pangea.
Fat-free, cholesterol-free, trans-fat-free health foods that nevertheless contain more calories than pure lard.
Cars in automobile ads never: Obey the speed limit, stop for lights, get stuck in traffic, need refueling, or obey the laws of gravity or physics. Oh, and if you buy this car, the road will be yours. Really. All other cars will simultaneously wink out of existence the moment you close the door.
Ads that rename household chores in an attempt to make them seem effortless – even fun. You’re not dusting, you’re swiffering. Dusting is boring and makes you sneeze. Swiffering is like reliving Footloose in your living room! Or someone else’s living room! Really, it’s that good.
Movie trailers that feature scenes that aren’t even in the damn movie. Showing all the good bits digested into 30 seconds is one thing, but now they’re just straight out lying about it.
Ads that oversimplify things for the sake of a sale. “See how fast and easy it is? It’s right there in the instruction manual, page 426.”
In computer technology, the marketing tactic of redefining storage quantities to make something seem bigger than it really is. In the days of cartridge video games (late 80s and into the 90s), the size of the game on the cartridge was expressed in “megs” while neglecting to mention that they’re talking megabits (1/8th of the more common and expected usage of megabytes). In hard drives, on the other hand, some brilliant marketing goon decided that a “meg” and a “gig” should be rounded down to the nearest round figure. Thus, a 100 gigabyte drive which should contain 102,400 megabytes (using the classic definition of “megabyte” to mean 1,024 kilobytes, or 2[sup]10[/sup] kilobytes, which is how every computer on the planet calculates it) is, in fact, actually 100,000 megabytes. Those missing 2.4 gigs? Not yours.
I can probably think of lots more, but it’s late and I need to get to sleep. In my bed, which is allegedly softer than pixie dust and upon which one could drop Mount Vesuvius without disturbing the glass of wine that someone left on it for some reason.
I must be pretty damn stupid, because I don’t see the problem with this. Surely not every stain can be solved by the self-cleaning function? Or if they can be, surely not all stains are large enough to warrant going through the time and energy use of putting it through the self-cleaning functioon?
Toothbrushes. All I want is a straight, used-to-be-normal brush with plain white bristles, that don’t point in various threatening directions, a handle that has fewer curves than J Lo used to, and that fits in my toothbrush holder. And costs less than $2. It’s now possible to buy a single, packaged, unpowered toothbrush in my local supermarket that costs nearly $AU10 ($US 8). The license to drive it is extra.
Then we get to toothpaste. I want a simple toothpaste with fluoride, detergent, and enough grit to do its job: no mouthwash, whitener, no words like BLAST, NEW, FORMULA or FRESH on the side.
Sorry, dude; have to harsh your mellow on this one. I used the self-cleaning function on my oven ONCE, and it was a friggin’ disaster. It made a permanent gross discolouration on the vents, it was very hot and nasty, and it took something like three or four hours at a very high temp (I can just imagine the power it sucks for that). I’ll just clean it with elbow grease and a safe cleaner in the future.
So what you’re saying is, a pro-vitamin is some sort of proto-vitamin. That wouldn’t work on a shampoo bottle either. I think we just recreated the very conversation that took place when pro-vitamins were first conceived for marketing. All in favor of “pro”? Pro-vitamin it is!
This is giving me a headache… where’s the extra-strength, time-released, gel-cap, night-time, Tylenol?
What the hell kind of recipe are you making that calls for 5 lbs of sugar, or 1/2 gallon of ice cream or 1lb of coffee?