You know what I’m talking about - a tv commercial will run with fine print at the bottom with an incredibly stupid warning.
I just saw one - an ad for metamucil. A tour guide was talking about how old faithful was regular enough to set your watch by. Then the caption reads “earlier…” and you see the ranger pouring some metamucil down the geyser.
The warning on the bottom: Dramatization only. Please obey all park rules.
The scary part is that I think I saw this commercial before without that print. Does that mean that people doing that actually became a problem, and they felt compelled to label it?
Another of my favorites: An SUV commercial that was around 6-8 months ago, IIRC. Showed a miniature/shrunken down SUV with driver in an oversized world, where he was driving along the jungle bottom, jumping over fallen trees, etc. with some sort of tiger or something chasing him.
Professional driver, do not attempt.
Attempt what!? To make a magical shrinking ray and go driving around the jungle?
While I can’t place a particular one, I often giggle at these stupid warnings.
What kills me is car commercials. They flash up all this fine print across the bottom 3rd of the screen so fast that nobody could possibly read it. Even if you did tape it and pause the tape, the small font is surely illegible.
So why bother?
I think many companies are so afraid of potential lawsuits they will put warnings on things that shouldn’t really require them.
Here’s some I found on the web:
This is from a clothes iron:
Warning: Never iron clothes on the body.
Batman Hallowe’en costume:
Warning: Cape does not enable user to fly.
A bottle of champagne:
Warning: Remove label before placing in microwave.
Here’s a whole website.
Oh, and I have seen the ‘magically appearing’ stupid disclaimer. Can’t remember the product, but it was equally as stupid as the one in the OP.
I’m still trying to understand that commercial with that Macgyver (sp?) guy in it that’s for some kind of phone card. It shows people using it with payphones, but then the disclaimer at the bottom says that you’ll be charged 25 cents extra if you use it with a pay phone. So I can get this card and pay more to use a pay phone? Does that make sense to anyone?
IIRC, the disclaimer on the Metamucil ad was put on after the (clueless droids at the) National Park Service objected.
Apparently, they didn’t really think that people would actually do what the ad pictured, but they didn’t want the Old Faithful image sullied, so the ad agency threw them a bone by adding the disclaimer.
The one that sticks in my mind is, of course, a car commercial. From a few years ago, this one showed some car driving across the surface of the ocean. I think it slalomed around some bouys and played chicken with a shark or something.
Of course, at the bottom it said something to the effect of “professional driver, do not attempt.” Ooooh, he’s a professional, is he? And I shouldn’t try to drive ON THE OCEAN? Good to know, thanks folks!
Actually, they were afraid that someone would try to throw something into a geyser and either get hurt or cause some other problems. (They also said that they did not like the implication that they have to resort to trickery to keep Old Faithful “faithful”)
Not really fine print, but might as well be: Those prescription drug commercials that always list the possible side effects, some of which seem more alarming than the affliction for which the drug is prescribed. The one that takes the cake, however, is for a sleeping medication that says one possible side effect is “drowsiness”.
I always get a kick out of the radio ads for cars - during the last 5 seconds or so the announcer has to kick into overdrive to spew out various financing disclaimers and such. Sure that is required by some law. Just wonder if anyone has ever actually tried to listen to that gibberish, and has adjusted their behavior in response.
Do you remember the Jeep commercial where the hikers cross the stream, then pause and look back at the stream, then the Jeep drives out of the bottom of the stream to the other side? (The joke being that they crossed on the roof of the submerged Jeep that the viewer hasn’t seen yet). Look closely at the bottom of the screen when the Jeep drives out of the stream:
[sub]Not designed for underwater driving[/sub]
I loved that one. I pictured some guy waving to the salesman as he drives his new Jeep off the lot, and directly into a river.
And I love the new medicine commercials. Right at the end spoken very fast in almost a whisper you hear [sub]Side effects include exlposive diarrhea sexual dysfunction scrotal warts and…[/sub] WHAT? What did they say???
I love how ads for certain baldness remedies note “certain sexual side-effects”. Don’t the “sexual side-effects” rather negate the entire purpose of a baldness remedy?
What bugs me is that they will offer up warnings for obviously ridiculous situations, but not issue warnings for real life dangers. Case in point are the car ads. An SUV driving up the side of someone’s roof gets a warning. The 4WD Jaguar tooling around carefree in a snowstorm that the snowplow driver is scared of gets nothing at all.
Somehow, I doubt that any SUV driver will wind up on his own roof, warnings or no. The Jaguar driver, though, might very well decide to go out in that bad snowstorm and wind up in a ditch.
Propecia is a pill that treats male pattern baldness. The add shows how men with a full head of dark hair is sexy and attractive (supposedly to women :dubious: )
Disclaimer in the end: Side effects can be sexual side effects or erectile dysfunction…
WTF??! You get your hair back but you cant have sex??! I’d rather be bald!
I’ve had to add a full screen’s worth of tiny warnings and precautions to a 30-second medical device ad. I left the full screen up for 3 seconds.
Once, I had to add a statement to a product brochure that said something like “Clinical studies do not predict results in possible future studies.”
Back on topic, I tend to say, “Professional driver on closed course. Do not attempt,” whenever I see any kind of driving in a commercial. I think it’s starting to bug my SO.
How many of us believe movies will soon get a similar treatment? Can anyone else imagine all the legal subtitles running through the bottom of the screen during a gangster movie?
The horror, the horror. (You’re experience may not include horror.)
Side effects from reading this thread may include: causing one to mock and subsequently disregard other product warnings, which could lead to headache, nausea, sexual dysfunction, cancer, SARS, baldness, constipation, blue urine, dancing teeth, shark attack, falling rocks, rubber bones, SUVs on the roof, hallucinations of Donald Rumsfeld in a tutu, tearing of the fabric of the space-time continuum, and rectal itch. See your doctor before reading any further. Never mind, you’re probably already dead, you poor sap.
When I was a kid there was a commercial for a certain brand of wrenches, Craftsman maybe. The commercial was demonstrating how tough the wrench was, by using it with a rope to tow a truck out of the mud. A disclaimer said that this was not the intended purpose and wrenches shouldn’t be used this way.
OK, doing donuts on the freeway I understand. Driving up the side of a cliff I understand. But when a car is driving in a straight line a 30-40 mph down a city road, why does it say “Professional driver on closed course”?
