People will buy anything!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I received a mailer the other day from Dillard’s (a department store), where I buy a few random products and shoes. In this mailer (I do look through them before tossing them in the recycle bin) was a product from Clarins called “Expertise 3P” It looks like a spritzer full of water, and it claims to protect your skin from electromagnetic waves from you cell phone, PDA, computer and artificial heating and cooling.

:stuck_out_tongue:

So what products that have unbelievable claims have you seen recently that just made you laugh?

2

I’m glad your link didn’t show a price, because anything more than “FREE!” would make me :eek: .

3

[QUOTE=picunurse]
I’m glad your link didn’t show a price, because anything more than “FREE!” would make me :eek: .
[/QUOTE]

$40 for 3.5 oz. Bargain, huh?

4

[QUOTE=Heffalump and Roo]
$40 for 3.5 oz. Bargain, huh?
[/QUOTE]
Actually, that’s not a bad price for metallic paint.

You need to cover your skin completely, though, for it to work; and this plays havoc with your sweating. And then you need to ground the metal layer, so you need to get those shoes with metal heels and run a grounding cable down to them. Be sure to bond the cable to the metallic layer on your skin with conductive glue.

The manufacturer should provide bulk conductivity specs for testing the finished installation as well, plus a chart of attenuation versus frequency for given thickness of paint.

Don’t skimp on the thickness, either; you don’t want frictional heating as the eddy currents course through the paint..

Man, it’s easier just to use tinfoil.

(Why yes, I’ve worked in and around Faraday cages… )

5

I remember buying an extension cord back in the day, 5 meter, 10 amp, 3 outlet, Windows 98 compatible.

6

It boggles my mind that anyone buys Enzyte, “The original once-daily tablet for Natural Male Enhancement” :dubious:

It’s an “herbal supplement” and there is no proof whatsoever that it increases penis size. Yet thousands of men are spending $100 a month on this garbage. Are people really that gullible?

7

[QUOTE=MrFantsyPants]
I remember buying an extension cord back in the day, 5 meter, 10 amp, 3 outlet, Windows 98 compatible.
[/QUOTE]

At Lowes, by the garage door opener stuff, they sell a ball that you can hang from the rafters. The kind that you can pull up to and when it touches your windshield, you’re in far enough. The package mentioned that it was “universal,” it worked with all garage door openers.

8

I’m not so sure that’s as much gullible as it is hopeful. I’m sure most of them don’t really believe, but there’s a lot of “what if” being peddled there.

9

[QUOTE=LVgeogeek]
I received a mailer the other day from Dillard’s (a department store), where I buy a few random products and shoes. In this mailer (I do look through them before tossing them in the recycle bin) was a product from Clarins called “Expertise 3P” It looks like a spritzer full of water, and it claims to protect your skin from electromagnetic waves from you cell phone, PDA, computer and artificial heating and cooling.

:stuck_out_tongue:

So what products that have unbelievable claims have you seen recently that just made you laugh?
[/QUOTE]

I love Clarins skincare but I don’t think I will be buying this product. Not only are the claims baseless, some of the plant extracts could irritate my already way too sensitive skin.

A good blog if anyone is intersted is The Beauty Brains

10

I can’t believe they still advertise the Q-Ray bracelet. I thought I’d heard the FCC or FTC or FDA, someone had cracked down on them. The only difference in the ads now, though, is that they’ve knocked off one of the payments, so instead of 3 payments of $50, it’s only 2. Oh yes, $100 is a much more reasonable price for a worthless piece of junk! boggle

It’s not even pretty!

11

One of my favorites are headphones or even batteries that are labeled “digital ready”.

12

Hey, now, it’s not just water. It has Succory Dock-Cress, too. You know, for the succors.

13

In Canada, a nation-wide donut francise, Tim Horton’s (think Duncan Donuts but with addictively ggod coffee) has its “Roll Up the Rim to Win” promotion. You roll up the lip of you paper coffee cup to see if you’re an instant prize winner.

We were in a hardware store last week that was selling widgets that would do this for you. So you’d have to carry this tool around so that you could deal with the few cups of coffee you may buy.

14

…How can I be the first to mention “Head On”
It apparently includes 1% of whatever ingredient is supposed to help your headaches. The other 99%…wax.

15

I also thought about it as a spray on Faraday cage- must be awfully cumbersome :smiley:

I had one of the garage balls for parking when we first moved into our house because I would always pull in to far and Mr Geek was always laughing at me for it. He made it from an old tennis ball and fishing line. I saw them for sale at the store and said people actually would pay money for this? Universal ahhahahahhah

I also remembered when I went to buy a new hair dryer recently and seeing some of the units that were for sale “Now with tourmaline jewels!” They (the boxes) claimed faster drying and added shine to hair :dubious:

16

“It’s amazing the things people would rather have than money.”
–“Garfield”, Jim Davis

17

[QUOTE=nyctea scandiaca]
It boggles my mind that anyone buys Enzyte, “The original once-daily tablet for Natural Male Enhancement” :dubious:

It’s an “herbal supplement” and there is no proof whatsoever that it increases penis size. Yet thousands of men are spending $100 a month on this garbage. Are people really that gullible?
[/QUOTE]

There’s more than one type of penis enhancenent – you wouldn’t argue its worth if you saw me typing. :smiley:

18

[QUOTE=nyctea scandiaca]
It boggles my mind that anyone buys Enzyte, “The original once-daily tablet for Natural Male Enhancement” :dubious:

It’s an “herbal supplement” and there is no proof whatsoever that it increases penis size. Yet thousands of men are spending $100 a month on this garbage. Are people really that gullible?
[/QUOTE]
There’s no claim that it increases penis size, is there? It’s sold as a getting-it-up aid.

I don’t know much about most of its ingredients, apart from saw palmetto – which has been shown to be helpful for folks who are unsatisfied in that area as a result of benign prostatic hyperplasia, and “horny goat weed” (properly called “epimedium,”) which has long been used in Chinese traditional medicine for that purpose, and which has a western-science-acknowledged pharmacological action of increasing blood pressure in the penis. The active ingredient is a PDE5 inhibitor, just like Viagra and other popular pharmacological hardon-helpers, albeit not quite as dramatically effective.

At a glance at the FAQ, it contains at least two substances which are known to definitely help produce better erections.

I don’t know if the quantities in a commercial preparation like Enzyte are comparable, but I spent five years with a woman who made various tinctures in her kitchen, and she had a daily “male enhancement” formula which contained epimedium and saw palmetto, plus half-a-dozen other weird substances that I don’t recall, steeped in Jack Daniels and strained. She kept me on that stuff and believe me, it paid dividends for her. I do miss that, but I have a feeling if I knocked on her door today and asked for a supply to use with my current GF, she’d probably slip me something that would make it turn black and fall off.

Anyway, I think your skepticism may be misplaced here. “Herbal” doesn’t necessarily mean “bunk.” Those herbs have chemicals in 'em, and sometimes they… do stuff. $100 a month, though? You could spend a lot less if you just made your own – on the other hand, when I recall how well that tincture worked, I would pay twice that and not blink, if that was the only way to get it. If Enzyte works half as well, fair dinkum.

19

[QUOTE=Cardinal]
One of my favorites are headphones or even batteries that are labeled “digital ready”.
[/QUOTE]

There is a grain of truth to the batteries – mainly when dealing with digital cameras that have a flash. Batteries intended for use in these devices are designed in such a way that they hold their peak amperage for as long as possible before beginning to drop off. This is useful in just about any digital device, but moreso in digital cameras because the flash causes a sharp dip in amperage, and if the battery is heading towards the end of its life, the flash can cause a dip in amperage strong enough to cause the camera to briefly lose power – assuming the camera isn’t smart enough to know the battery is too low to safely use the flash.

The headphone part baffles me, considering the connection is analog anyway, but ignorance of the average consumer when it comes to electronics, it’s entirely possible that sales people and support lines were getting questions like “will these work with my digital MP3 player?” way too often, so like the apparent necessity to put instructions on a pack of toothpicks, headphones proclaim their digital compatibility to fend off stupid questions.

20

[QUOTE=Larry Mudd]
There’s no claim that it increases penis size, is there? It’s sold as a getting-it-up aid.
[/QUOTE]

They used to.

Enzyte Marketers Sued
Press Release, Hagens Berman
March 17, 2004

I don’t trust any of those bums. It’s all snake oil. You’re right about herbs being full of chemicals, but I put my trust in scientists who distill and refine the useful chemicals, test them, and discard the dangerous and useless.