Logical problems in commercials

Cafe Society
1

Any logical problems or things that just don’t make sense in commercials you’ve seen?

For me, it’s a local commercial (I think) for a Toyota dealership. They have this new deal where you buy a car and you get free gas “for up to two years” (with tons and tons of fine print of course).

Anyway, it starts out by really obnoxiously showing various people with various things to say about their gas. “I haven’t paid for gas in months,” “I haven’t paid for gas in a year,” “I don’t know why anyone would pay for gas anymore!”, etc.

But if it’s a new deal, how have these people managed to go without paying for gas for years?

sigh I hate that commercial.

Any others?

2

There used to be a local moving company whose ad said that their containerized shipping “doubles the quality of your move at no extra cost”. How did they come up with “double”? Did they measure the quality of move with some kind of move-quality-meter to figure that out?

3

“In a perfect world, everything would be different.”

  1. This might mean that in a perfect world, everything would be different from the way things actually are in our world. We live in the worst of all possible worlds, turning the philosophy of Leibniz on its head. We must come to terms with the fact that our world is in every respect the antithesis of a perfect world. We must embrace this extreme pessimism and buy a Dodge.

  2. This might mean that in a perfect world, every thing would be different from every other thing. In other words, the perfect world would be one of pure chaos–absolute disorder that cannot possibly be resolved. Every thing is different from every other thing, and thus it is impossible to contextualize any phenomena into a sensible pattern. Indeed, in a perfect world, intelligent life would be impossible.

4

The commercials that I have a problem with are the ones for new brand name drugs. The symptoms or illness or condition it’s supposed to help with isn’t given!
And not many clues, either.
People of all ages, both sexes, running on the beach, laying on a lawn, working at some office, all in the same commercial. "Ask your doctor about [insert new drug name here].

Or that pickup truck commercial, where some guy in his brand new truck is stopped at a light, right next to a construction site. Then this huge trencher/backhoe/whatever dumps a massive load of dirt or slag or something in the back. Supposedly the construction workers got all confused by how “tough” that truck is. Man, their insurance better be paid up!

5

Geico: “Save up to 15% or more on car insurance.” So they’re claiming… nothing.

6

I always got a headache from the Life cereal commercials (Hey, he likes it! Hey, Mikey!). The premise seemed to be that if one of the kids tried the cereal and legitimately decided he didn’t like it, none of the kids would ever have to eat it. Not in any household I ever saw.

“Listen, you little twerps, the cereal has been paid for. It’s what was on sale, and you are by-god going to eat every speck of it before another box of cold cereal comes into this house.”

7

Ask me to think of commercials without them and I’ll have trouble. There’s only so much commercial doublespeak that one man can take.

8

Heh heh… I never caught that. that’s funny.

There was a thread recently that tackled this mystery. If they tell you what the drug is for, then they also have to rattle off the infamous “Side effects may include…” spiel. I guess some drug companies just choose not to deal with that.

9

I am currently being driven mad by that Brinks Home Security commerical where Mom and the kids are getting ready to pop some microwave popcorn and watch a video on the tee vee when an unshaven criminal-type breaks the window on the back door.

The alarm goes off, and Mom rushes the kids upstairs to a bedroom and wedges a chair under the doorknob.

We (that’s us, dig, the viewing audience) see the unshaven criminal type run away because of the alarm.

Switch back to the bedroom, where the phone rings. Mom picks up and, hurray! It’s Brinks! “Is everything okay?”

“No! Someone just tried to break in!”

FREEZEFRAME!!!

Now, does anyone see the difficulty here? Someone just tried to break in???. Lady, someone just succeeded in breaking the window on your back door, and for all you know, someone is standing outside your flimsy bedroom door with an ax, already planning how he’s going to hack your three adorable children into convenient easy-to-tote chunks.

Okay, okay, though, she’s scared, perhaps not thinking clearly. Perhaps just a slip of the tongue.

Pod hits PLAY again.

“We’ll send someone right away,” says the Brinks person.

The woman visibly relaxes, and begins soothing her kids. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be alright.” Not panicky, not disturbed, just the picture of maternal reassurance. And standing, if I recall correctly, with her back to the door.

I see only three possiblities here:

  1. This woman is deeply, deeply stupid, and thinks that the alarm going off and the Brinks person saying the mystical ritual words “We’ll send someone!” have created a magical Sphere of Invulnerability around her and her children, or alternatively a Field of Terror which causes even the most deranged, drug-crazed, or determined unshaven criminal to flee the viscinity in abject horror, never to return.

  2. Somehow, through the Magic of Television[sup]TM[/sup] she saw what we, the audience saw: the unshaven criminal running away. Also through the Magic of Television[sup]TM[/sup], presumably, she knew that she was in a Brinks Home Security commercial, and, having a keen copywriter’s sense, knows that if the unshaven criminal were recover his courage and return to kick down the door and rape her as the children watch, that would probably not sell so many Brinks Home Security Systems.

  3. Even though this looks like your typical bedroom with your typical door wedged shut with your typical chair under a typical doorknob, this is just clever and aestetically pleasing camoflage. This room, cleverly constructed to look like a bedroom, is actually a “panic room,” as see in that one movie with Jodie Foster, what’s it called . . . I forget. Anyway, the woman and her children are actually perfectly safe, and in the comfort of familiar surroundings . . . and that’s the (unadvertised) Brinks advantage!

10

If you leave loaded guns lying around your house where your thirteen-year-old son and his buddy can find them, and if the thirteen-year-old decides to experiment with not being sober, he might shoot his buddy.

So stay away from pot!

Our government has outlawed pot, thus creating a violent and unnecessary black market in pot that to a large degree replaces domestic hippy production of pot; sometimes, terrorists finance their operations by using this black market created by pot’s illegality.

So you’re to blame for terrorists!

If your teenage kids are unsupervised alone at a party that has pot (not alcohol), one of them might be so stoned that he’ll rape a girl (not so stoned that he’ll giggle helplessly all night at the ceiling fan).

So make sure there’s no pot at those unsupervised parties you let your teenage kids go to!

I hate 'em. Hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em.

Daniel

11

“Are you short on cash? Then come down to our store for our big sale!”

Ummm… if I am short on money, and then I buy something, won’t I have less money?

12

Can someone explain to me how a pickup, no matter how powerful, could possibly, in ANY universe, tow a massive tanker through 3 foot deep ice? I can understand a little overstatement, but the pure guts to overstate something beyond the realm of any possibility is insulting.

13

Every time I hear this sh*t I want to scream. Is it up to 15%? Or is it more than 15%? Which is it? It can’t be both, it has to be one or the other!

14

Local music store sale radio commercial:

“Save --not up to-- but at LEAST 50, 60, even 70%!”:confused:

so how much am I saving again?

15

It wouldn’t sound as good if they said “Save 15%, more or less”.

There is a commercial wherein we are told that purchasing a car with side airbags is the only thing that will save your life if an enormous metal donut breaks free and crashes into your car as you wait at a stoplight.

They want me to spend the extra two thousand dollars on side airbags, and that is the best reason they could come up with?

16

There’s a commercial (I haven’t seen it played in the past couple months, but hey) for some juice blend. It has twin brothers staying at their grandma’s house, and the grandma has some juice for them.

The first boy (Tommy? Something like that) drinks his juice and then goes upstairs to pretend to be his brother and get more juice. He changes clothes. His brother’s in the bathroom, so he shuts the door and blocks the handle with a chair.

TWO THINGS:

1 - Why can’t the stupid kid just ASK for more juice?

2 - The moron kid “stuck” in the bathroom just needs to open the door. The door opens inward, not outward! The chair does absolutely nothing, and will just fall inward when you open the door normally!

17

The most bizarre commercial I ever saw was one sponsored by trial lawyers.

Some years back, when there was a Lawsuit Reform bill pending in the Texas legislature to prevent “frivolous” lawsuits, the trial lawyers (naturally) opposed it. And they tried to counter it with a commercial showing a drunk guzzling scotch right out of a bottle, then climbing behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler in the middle of the night.

Meanwhile, there was a voiceover warning us of the dire consequences we Texans would face if we weren’t able to sue big business for zillions of dollars, and warning how awful it would be if we couldn’t sue evil people who hurt our children.

And FINALLY, we see a 5 year old girl playing with her little dollies in the dark, in the middle of the road. She looks up from her dollies in horror, as the drunken trucker is about to run her over.

Exactly what a 5 year old was doing in the street in the middle of the night was never explained, of course.

18

There is an ad for one of those fancy mops where a woman says ‘This looks like something I’ve never seen before’. If you’ve never seen it before, how do you know this mop looks like it?

19

There’s a commercial playing lately for some kind of car. It shows a man and a woman racing through the steets, looking into the back seat of the car, and giving the impression there’s some kind of medical emergency. Turns out they’re moving a fish tank, and the fish inside is in trouble. The car pulls up to a building, the couple in the car gets out, goes to the back of the car (it’s a hatchback) a lifts out the fishtank full of water!. How the heck can these two people lift what looks like a 20-30 gallon tank so easily? Next time I move, I’m getting these two to carry all my stuff.

20

You’re right, but “Typical savings of 15%” would be more meaningful, and still have a nice dactylic rhythm.