There’s a current McDonald’s commercial which frequently uses the phrase “the Egg McMuffin of” whatever. First, they apparently think that this either is, or will become, a real phrase that real people really use.
Also, when I think of the Egg McMuffin, I think of something that you expect to be really awesome and that you think you really want, but turns out with you feeling disappointed and kind of sick. “The Egg McMuffin of boyfriends” is, at best, a veiled insult. To be fair, I’ve had several Egg McMuffins of girlfriends.
I occasionally marvel at the idea that those commercials mean that highly-paid advertising professionals must have held a series of talks about ass lint.
I’m always amused when someone whips a perfect, undamaged box of medication from their purse or backpack.
Another win for the grammar police: some new Bausch & Lomb product, which opens with a woman asking “Don’t you wish there was an eyedrop that did … something?” I don’t know what this miracle product is supposed to do, because I’m busy ranting “Were, people, WERE!!!” Ad copywriters are apparently raised by wolves!
Spelling out numbers for prices - so 279 becomes not two hundred and seventy-nine but two seven nine - annoys the hell out of me. For some reason ads that do this seem to cluster together so the third in a row has me in Muttley-esque mutterings.
Beer commercials where all these hot women will hang out with you if you provide the sponsor’s beer. Most women don’t care for beer, and those that do have as many differing preferences as the men.
What were the Restasis people thinking when they decided to use the lady opthalmologist with the creepiest looking eyes this side of Michele Bachmann?
Bitchy domineering wives and their wimpy incompetent husbands.
This bothers me too, but more so for the latter reason. I don’t believe anybody at McDonald’s or their ad agency actually believes the egg McMuffin will actually become a catch-phrase; it’s being used in a mock-metaphoric sense. Having said that, I agree with your assessment of its meaning - to me it sounds sardonic, and I wouldn’t use it to describe anything as superlative. I must admit I was confused when I first saw the commercial, because the intended meaning caused such cognitive dissonance.
It is genuinely odd to me that the side-effects of many of these new ‘wonder drugs’ are genuinely horrible.
I am thinking about a medication for blood-pressure or cholesterol that includes such marvelous things as ‘feelings of suicide’.
Nausea and vomiting I could understand, but some profound mental result?
These are all thanks to the laws we have in place about advertising drugs. If you advertise what a drug is supposed to treat, you are required by law to also report all the side effects that came up in testing, no matter how implausible the apparent link between the drug and the effect, and no matter how rare.
And that’s also why you get the ads where they don’t say what the drug does - those are just there to build up a positive brand image for the drug without having to give all those nasty side effects.
You’ll have to get a few hundred friends to join with you. They don’t have to report every single “side effect” a drug has in trials, just the most common. I forget if it’s anything found in 5% or more or 10% or more, but there is some number above which you must disclose.
That’s not entirely true. Just about any negative thing that occurs while a person is on a drug trial is considered an “an adverse effect” and must be reported. If a person dies because they stepped in front of a bus, it must be reported.
However, in order to make the list as a side effect (and the side effects are grouped into ‘likely’, ‘rare’ etc) there must be a minimum number of reports.