Enhanced Television Ads

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Have you seen those new snacks on television? The ones called Twisters, where two different fruity fillings are in a granola bar and twisted about each other? Don’t they look yummy? I mean, SO MUCH FRUIT FILLING! The you buy them and discover that there is only a thin thread of filling in a thick crust of granola which barely resembles the television ad.

How about those magic knives? They slice, they dice, they remain razor sharp after hacking up a steel hammer and cut through a ripe tomato with ease. PLUS, you get 6 - count 'em, 6 steak knives of stainless steel that will not only cut through the toughest steak but the bone also for $29.99. Don’t they look good? Then you buy them and discover that A: they are smaller than they looked on TV - because the demonstrator was small, B: they BEND, something the demonstrator was careful not to show you, C: they WILL cut a steel hammer and cut through a ripe tomato – but ONLY if you practice on about 10 tomatoes and hold the knife JUST right, D: the steak knives are smaller than normal and, within weeks, E: the ‘stainless’ steel starts to rust in spots.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I want more truth in advertising. I’ve NEVER gotten that perfect burger on television, found a TV dinner that was actually as sumptuous as the one in the ad, and forget about those INFOMERCIAL deals where you buy a roaster, or a fryer or a dehydrator for ONLY 4 EZ payments of $29.95. (A year later, the same stuff shows up in Walmart for a total payment of $19.95 to $29.95.) Those nifty vegetable slicers turn out to have iron blades which rust! They don’t tell you that the ADDITIONAL TOP WARMER is there because they didn’t add insulation in the device plus any spills get seared forever into the paint.

Remember the Cracker Jack toy? That wonderful little whistle, rubber ball, tiny metal ring, plastic magnifying glass? The product still advertises a free toy inside, but what one gets now is made of PAPER!

Then the ever present car commercials. Ever noticed how NOT ONE COMMERCIAL INTERVAL on television can go by WITHOUT A CAR COMMERCIAL? Then they laud the ‘new’ styles and equipment but forget to tell one that the SUV flips over in a stiff wind, that the ‘crush zones’ NOW include the drivers side and are there because reinforcements were removed to save money. The best part is that they never mention to you that, because they cram the motor into a tiny compartment, that you might have to send the car into a shop just to get a spark plug removed! (On one model, the engine actually had to be lifted several inches to have the plugs changed!)

Plus, I’m very weary of processed foods not listing all of their ingredients. Usually the rest of the contents are hidden under things like - assorted spices and flavorings. Plus, ever get suspicious over no cholesterol foods that have a little tag on them telling you to call an 800 number to find out about the products actual cholesterol content?

I knew of trans-fatty acids BEFORE they started showing up in the news lately. ANY margarine that stays solid at room temperature, like Country Crock, is made with a semi-treated vegetable fat that, upon consumption, turns into cholesterol! Legally, the maker may state that the product has no cholesterol because he does not have to tell you that the stuff will TURN into it after consumption!

I want more fact and truth in advertisement.

As a side note here, in New Zealand, many American processed food products are not allowed to be sold in the country because they do not completely list the ingredients, like their own products are required to do.

The Night Watch always knows things.

2

I heard someone complain yesterday about commercials that star an actress from the show you are currently watching. Hey! Way to break the suspension of disbelief, Ass-holes!

So do what I did. Get rid of your TV.

3

My favorite new commercial is for the “Last Silver Dollar of the Millenium”! Yes, folks, a U.S. coin made of REAL silver, with the famous “walking Liberty” on the face, specially tinted in red, white and blue! And it’s all yours for only $39.95!

That’s right, it’s a forty dollar DOLLAR.

Official Poster of the Millenium

4

Our latest product disappointment was Russell Stover’s Peanut Butter & Jelly Cups. The commercial makes them look like they are chock-full of creamy peanut butter and squishy jelly, but in reality they are filled with a peanut-like powdery substance and something that’s supposed to be jelly but is closer to being asphalt roof patch. (By the way, according to the date on the packages this stuff was well within the freshness date.)

I see their wisdom in making the commercial entirely in computer animation, because reality is way out of kilter with what they’re selling.

5

Actually, your body makes cholesterol out of squalane, which it makes from acetic acid (vinegar).

6

Okay, I checked to make sure that what I remembered was correct, and right off the bat I notice I spelled squalene wrong.

Second… while cholesterol is not made directly from fats, a high fat diet apparently DOES stimulate the liver to make more cholesterol than it otherwise would.

7

NITWATCH:

Granted that the Americans should show more ingredients than they do, but I’m sure you’ll admit that at least the major ingredients do appear on the label.

Except on liquor. It really bugs me that liquor is totally exempt from these laws and shows nothing other than the alcohol content.

My question is: Does liquor in NZ list the ingredients?

8

Guy Incognito said:

::GAG::

They sound nasty already! And then you had to go and buy some?

Excuse me, I gotta go retch.

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, dogs are from Pluto.

9

I saw the forty dollar silver dollar ad, too. What struck me was that it contains 1 ounce of silver. So you’ve got a dollar coing that if you melted it down you could sell the metal for $5.15 or so …

Or would that be the 40 ad?

10

Fermentation is a complex process. The stuff that went in - corn mash, sugar, grapes, yeast, rocky mountain spring water, whatever - no longer describes what’s in the finished product. If you wanted a true list of ingredients I suppose you could run it through a gas cromatograph but the results wouldn’t be useful unless you were programming your official ST:TNG replicator.

Personally I think there needs to be a federal standard for “wholesome goodness.”

11

Padeye: (1) One could say the same thing about bread, so ferget that argument. (2) You might not be aware that the things are not as simple as they were 100 years ago. All sorts of colorings and flavorings are going into this stuff nowadays, and I’d like to have a better fix on who’s producing a more old-fashioned product, and who’s been doctoring it up.

12

According to my last foray into ‘Honesty in Big Business’ (HA!), it was determined that most producers of food products do not want the general public to know what goes into them because they might not want to CONSUME the product afterwards. Being increasingly health conscious, Americans like to read their food labels because it already has been observed that some products advertised as healthy food seem to have little in them that actually can be considered food.

Misleading advertisements get the general public also. Lite Beer is NOT LOW CALORIE. It means less carbonation in the beer, so you feel less full and can guzzle more and go out and run someone over. Many LITE products are not less calorie nor low in sugar. A food product does not have to actually leave out any ingredient to be termed lite.

Some products under misleading names like ‘mothers old fashioned soups’ bring up thoughts of good, wholesome ingredients, but in reality most of the stuff is full of flavor enhancers, stranger preservatives, increased salt levels and heavy fats. Some products full of sugar are disclosed as lite, and cane sugar is replaced by dextrose, which is just as bad, and requires more to make it sweet but many people fail to realize this and buy the produce.

You can actually gain weight on some diet foods. Pasta meals are made of flour. Flour turns into a percentage of sugar in the stomach. Sugar means fat. (Take a Saltine cracker, crunch it up in your mouth and hold it there. Within minutes the flour breaks down and it gets sweet.)

Soups, canned, imported from Germany actually list LARD as an ingredient. Any processed food with lard in it made in America has about a dozen or so different names for the stuff to hide the fact that it is lard.

The often made fun of potted meat, SPAM, is actually one of the few very truthful products out. It lists spiced ham, packing jell and fats along with salt. You might want to buy a TUB of some of those pre-made BBQ’s on the market and try to figure out what is in them. I think they even have disguised names for rat feces, which, believe it or not, is in nearly ALL frozen TV dinners, but cooked thoroughly and within acceptable government standards.

Mark
“Think of it as Evolution in action.”