(no subject)
"Has this ever happened to you? You go to type on your computer keyboard and then realize too late, UH-OH, that's actually the surface of a ridiculously hot hibachi grill! Then you need HeadLight, the world's first halogen light insulated well enough to be affixed directly to your forehead! Experience visibility like never before!"
Ridiculous, right? I mean, absurd past the point where it can even really be funny, because the cognitive dissonance between these two images is, in any sane person, probably too much to reconcile into the world of "reasonable but amusing misunderstanding." Yet I'm betting, with the right connections, I could turn that into a legitimate infomercial.
I know I've railed against infomercials here in the past, but I can't help it. I'm nocturnal. They are my constant companions, even if their omnipresence was diminished somewhat by the invention and proliferation of DVR technology. Now, instead of watching Ron Popeil violate a turkey with a syringe big enough to give Keith Richards wet dreams, I watch Craig Ferguson discuss sexual euphemisms with a robot. But I think they sense that their habitat is disappearing, and like any life form, they are evolving. They've begun flinging spores into other time slots in the guise of regular length commercials that contain the same absurd premises and the same level of production values and acting, for the same kind of products that alien archaeologists will one day unearth and wonder how we, as a species, even flirted with space travel(1).
These spores have really begun to take root in the intellectually barren wasteland of daytime talk shows, because as we all know, rational thought is the herbicide of impulse TV buying. After the ladies of The View, or The Talk, or The Conversation, or The Discussion, or The Semi-Rational Debate About Largely Irrelevant Topics Taking Place Between Four Completely Irrelevant Personalities From Comically Far Reaches of the Political and Philosophical Spectrum are done numbing your brain while trying to figure out if the Earth is round or flat(2), they strike.
"Has this ever happened to you?"
That's their mating call. The siren song that brings the shopaholic to their treacherous rocks. The formula is quite simple. You create a problem, you convince people they have that problem, then you offer a solution to that problem ABSOLUTELY FREE(3)! And it's a pretty tried and true formula, the pharmaceutical companies(4) have been using it for years. What bothers me so much about it is their apparent target audience, based on the "problems" they create, and the terrifying implications involved if these people actually exist. Let's take a look at a couple of examples, only mildly exaggerated.
The Product: The Ove Glove
What It Is: A glorified pot holder
How the Commercial Begins: "Has this ever happened to you?" Woman attempts to get a hot pan out of her oven (where the heating elements aren't even glowing, but that's just me being a picky bastard), stands still for a moment, and proceeds to slam her lasagna down on the floor as though it had pulled a gun on her, or Garfield had just slit her throat from behind. The implication is basically that standard pot holders will immediately burst into flames on contact with hot surfaces(5). It goes on to show people wearing Ove Gloves changing light bulbs while they're still on, proving that the product is also good for people with no understanding of the properties of electricity.
I cook a lot, and yeah, after years of service you'll occasionally get a pot holder that's all, "You know what, screw this noise," and you'll get about two inches from the oven before pain receptors start having a rave. But this product isn't accomplishing anything that you couldn't ask a regular pot holder or a good dish towel to do. If you're looking for something that's good for both retrieving your meatloaf and extracting plutonium rods from a nuclear reactor, your priorities may not be in order. But at least the lady in this commercial was operating somewhat inside the parameters of competence, unlike...
The Product: The Chef Basket
What It Is: A mutant deep fat fryer cage
How the Commercial Begins: "Has this ever happened to you?" A woman has just finished boiling some pasta(6), which is ready to be moved to the sink to be drained. Undaunted by the laws of thermodynamics, the woman grasps the handles of the pot -- which has been living over high heat for 20 some odd minutes now -- with her bare hands. Carnage ensues. As the metal begins melding with her flesh, she screams, flinging the pot directly into the air, where it dumps onto her head. Now blinded by scalding water and covered in noodles and blistered flesh, she staggers, screaming, into the living room, where her children are watching Sesame Street. At the sound of her voice they turn, only to see this wet, bubbling, noodly monster shrieking, arms outstretched in their direction. Decades later, while in a court mandated therapy program, this is the moment her eldest son will describe as the turning point on his path to becoming "The Boiler," a serial killer that terrorized the tri-state area by boiling his victims alive in an industrial cauldron.
...okay, I may have made most of that up. But the woman really does grab the pot with her bare hands, and then has the nerve to act surprised when it burns. Then she tries again, from a different angle in a different shot, doing everything but trying to pick the pot up with her teeth. Then the basket appears in the pot, and suddenly the world is made only of marshmallow peeps and rainbows because its handles, which have no direct line of conduction to the heat source, are somehow cool enough to touch! So this is a product which is, by all appearances, marketed toward people who don't realize that hot things burn. Maybe they should all buy Ove Gloves instead! I hear you can paddle through magma with those things! I'm not saying it isn't a good idea, draining pasta and such is a pain in the ass and a basket like that would probably be handy. Just maybe sell it on the clever parts, and not like your target audience was Frankenstein's monster. "Heat baaaad! FIRE BAAAAAD!" Because colanders already exist, so you might wanna market against that. Just sayin'.
But the incompetence doesn't stop in the kitchen, oh no, because there's always...
The Product: Micro Touch Max Personal Trimmer
What It Is: A small piece of plastic that buzzes and occasionally removes hair
How the Commercial Begins: "Has this ever happened to you?" A man stands before a bathroom mirror, pondering the futility of his existence while attempting to remove hair from his already inexplicably clean-shaven face. Clearly suffering from some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, he reaches for a pair of full-sized scissors. Eyes darkening with the thoughts of his impending messy divorce, the scissors raise, slowly, every so slowly, until the gleaming tip of the razor-sharp rear blade rests gently against the base of one nostril. With one thrust, it could all be over. He knows this. He's thought about this moment ever since the papers were filed...but he decides to try and trim his nose hair instead. Even that goes awry, as one snip too close results in a flash of pain, and a mild abrasion that will surely be a minor inconvenience for days to come. A look of supreme anguish flashes across the man's face, frozen in monochromatic still frame, as he realizes that even in this, a basic hygienic function, he has failed...
Alright, fine, I'm embellishing again. But dude really does come at his own nostril with gigantic scissors and gets this horrible look on his face, which has some kind of weird Jim Carrey-esque elasticity to it, when things don't go as planned. This shot is followed by him attacking the back of his neck with a straight razor, more grimacing, him shoving some kind of sharp implement into his ear, more grimacing...you get the idea. A man with the motor skills of a doped up chimpanzee has been given a tray of grooming implements and proceeded to injure himself in ways that I'm certain Amnesty International would be interested in hearing about.
Another flash add, this time of the trimmer, and suddenly he's completely hairless! An alopecia areata patient on the rampage with a tray of sharp objects he somehow acquired! Not really, but I can't stand this commercial so I'm trying to spice it up a bit! He uses the trimmer to fix his (nonexistent) unibrow, shave his (nonexistent) sideburns, and even shave his (nonexistent) beard before flashing a smug, shit-eating grin at the camera while a random woman paid to stroke his face earns her keep. It goes on to show him shaving his arms, his legs, and (I kid you not) his glory trail right on down past his waistband. The basic idea is unconditional "LOL hair removal." Provided, of course, that like the man in the commercial you didn't have any hair in these areas to begin with. Oh, also, it has a light! For...you know...night shaving. Except the light points straight out, on a product designed to hover above the surface that it's working on, so...good luck with that.
Look, fine, it seems to show SOME hair that looks to have been previously affixed falling away after a pass with the trimmer, albeit one square centimeter at a time. But every review you find online says that it binds up every few seconds on even the finest of hair textures. I take this personally, because I grow steel wool. You can get the tarnish off the bumpers of classic cars just by having me rub my face against them. I can get the grease out of a casserole dish by rubbing Dawn into my beard and motor-boating the sink. I can't even get more than two shaves out of the Gillette razors that are lined with the same industrial-grade diamonds they use to edge band saws with. My beard would yank this trimmer out of my hands and break it apart while I looked on in horror, just to send me a message.
I guess this commercial offends me more than the other two because the Ove Glove is ostensibly an improvement over a product that was shown being used properly, and the Chef Basket was a decent idea even if it was meant to replace the behavior of someone who apparently should never have been allowed in the kitchen, much less near a heat source. This thing is a downgrade from the options that already exist, with its artificial need being produced by a man all but ramming his face into an upturned lawn mower as a point of comparison. It's hard to argue with that logic, right? "Micro Touch Max, it's better than brutal decapitation!" Really this all comes down to my hatred of out of touch marketing, much less piss poor out of touch marketing. As previously mentioned, that's why these offshoots of old school infomercials seem to be much more prevalent during the day. Soap operas and shrieking harpies disable your defenses enough that this might, MIGHT just seem like a good idea.
What was the point of this post? Well, I'd be glad to tell you. Just send $14.95 to the address on your screen now, the first 500 customers will receive an extra moral lesson at absolutely no extra cost, you only pay e-shipping, act now and we'll throw in a tote bag, all this could be yours, your life is devoid of purpose without it, all your neighbors have one! Consume! CONSUME!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 - DVD box sets of the Jersey Shore and the decaying but still relatively intact husk of an As Seen on TV store will be all they need to justify having annihilated us to their media.
2 - Not making that part up...
3 - Just pay shipping and handling and processing on each separate unit, purchase implies user has agreed to continue to receive products on a 10 day billing cycle which their credit card will be charged for on an automatically renewing basis unless all products, UPC codes, packaging, materials, receipts, shipping invoices, and a lollipop are returned to Telebrands Plaza 48 hours prior to their arriving at your home, offer not good in any state containing an S, allow 6-24 months for delivery, do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
4 - I try not to stack footnotes too often, but those assholes get a blog of their own soon enough. Which may cause fainting, nausea, diarrhea, anti-social behavior, thoughts of suicide, thoughts of homicide, thoughts of regicide, thoughts of pesticide, grazing, narcoleptic fits, and uncontrollable flatulence.
5 - And provide little protection against homicidal pasta-addicted cats that are struggling to get by after ceasing to be funny about 20 years ago.
6 - Do we really still live in an age where every cooking product commercial must include only women, usually operating in an "Aww shucks, I'm barely competent enough to do that!" manner? Are we really still deluded enough to think it's only housewives in floral print dresses who are home in the middle of the day? Why can't a man cut his finger on a raggedy old knife, or look on despondently as the stains in his favorite shirt just won't come out? Huh?! Equality! Equality! Yeah, I'm not sure which side of the fence this footnote was supposed to be on, either.
Ridiculous, right? I mean, absurd past the point where it can even really be funny, because the cognitive dissonance between these two images is, in any sane person, probably too much to reconcile into the world of "reasonable but amusing misunderstanding." Yet I'm betting, with the right connections, I could turn that into a legitimate infomercial.
I know I've railed against infomercials here in the past, but I can't help it. I'm nocturnal. They are my constant companions, even if their omnipresence was diminished somewhat by the invention and proliferation of DVR technology. Now, instead of watching Ron Popeil violate a turkey with a syringe big enough to give Keith Richards wet dreams, I watch Craig Ferguson discuss sexual euphemisms with a robot. But I think they sense that their habitat is disappearing, and like any life form, they are evolving. They've begun flinging spores into other time slots in the guise of regular length commercials that contain the same absurd premises and the same level of production values and acting, for the same kind of products that alien archaeologists will one day unearth and wonder how we, as a species, even flirted with space travel(1).
These spores have really begun to take root in the intellectually barren wasteland of daytime talk shows, because as we all know, rational thought is the herbicide of impulse TV buying. After the ladies of The View, or The Talk, or The Conversation, or The Discussion, or The Semi-Rational Debate About Largely Irrelevant Topics Taking Place Between Four Completely Irrelevant Personalities From Comically Far Reaches of the Political and Philosophical Spectrum are done numbing your brain while trying to figure out if the Earth is round or flat(2), they strike.
"Has this ever happened to you?"
That's their mating call. The siren song that brings the shopaholic to their treacherous rocks. The formula is quite simple. You create a problem, you convince people they have that problem, then you offer a solution to that problem ABSOLUTELY FREE(3)! And it's a pretty tried and true formula, the pharmaceutical companies(4) have been using it for years. What bothers me so much about it is their apparent target audience, based on the "problems" they create, and the terrifying implications involved if these people actually exist. Let's take a look at a couple of examples, only mildly exaggerated.
The Product: The Ove Glove
What It Is: A glorified pot holder
How the Commercial Begins: "Has this ever happened to you?" Woman attempts to get a hot pan out of her oven (where the heating elements aren't even glowing, but that's just me being a picky bastard), stands still for a moment, and proceeds to slam her lasagna down on the floor as though it had pulled a gun on her, or Garfield had just slit her throat from behind. The implication is basically that standard pot holders will immediately burst into flames on contact with hot surfaces(5). It goes on to show people wearing Ove Gloves changing light bulbs while they're still on, proving that the product is also good for people with no understanding of the properties of electricity.
I cook a lot, and yeah, after years of service you'll occasionally get a pot holder that's all, "You know what, screw this noise," and you'll get about two inches from the oven before pain receptors start having a rave. But this product isn't accomplishing anything that you couldn't ask a regular pot holder or a good dish towel to do. If you're looking for something that's good for both retrieving your meatloaf and extracting plutonium rods from a nuclear reactor, your priorities may not be in order. But at least the lady in this commercial was operating somewhat inside the parameters of competence, unlike...
The Product: The Chef Basket
What It Is: A mutant deep fat fryer cage
How the Commercial Begins: "Has this ever happened to you?" A woman has just finished boiling some pasta(6), which is ready to be moved to the sink to be drained. Undaunted by the laws of thermodynamics, the woman grasps the handles of the pot -- which has been living over high heat for 20 some odd minutes now -- with her bare hands. Carnage ensues. As the metal begins melding with her flesh, she screams, flinging the pot directly into the air, where it dumps onto her head. Now blinded by scalding water and covered in noodles and blistered flesh, she staggers, screaming, into the living room, where her children are watching Sesame Street. At the sound of her voice they turn, only to see this wet, bubbling, noodly monster shrieking, arms outstretched in their direction. Decades later, while in a court mandated therapy program, this is the moment her eldest son will describe as the turning point on his path to becoming "The Boiler," a serial killer that terrorized the tri-state area by boiling his victims alive in an industrial cauldron.
...okay, I may have made most of that up. But the woman really does grab the pot with her bare hands, and then has the nerve to act surprised when it burns. Then she tries again, from a different angle in a different shot, doing everything but trying to pick the pot up with her teeth. Then the basket appears in the pot, and suddenly the world is made only of marshmallow peeps and rainbows because its handles, which have no direct line of conduction to the heat source, are somehow cool enough to touch! So this is a product which is, by all appearances, marketed toward people who don't realize that hot things burn. Maybe they should all buy Ove Gloves instead! I hear you can paddle through magma with those things! I'm not saying it isn't a good idea, draining pasta and such is a pain in the ass and a basket like that would probably be handy. Just maybe sell it on the clever parts, and not like your target audience was Frankenstein's monster. "Heat baaaad! FIRE BAAAAAD!" Because colanders already exist, so you might wanna market against that. Just sayin'.
But the incompetence doesn't stop in the kitchen, oh no, because there's always...
The Product: Micro Touch Max Personal Trimmer
What It Is: A small piece of plastic that buzzes and occasionally removes hair
How the Commercial Begins: "Has this ever happened to you?" A man stands before a bathroom mirror, pondering the futility of his existence while attempting to remove hair from his already inexplicably clean-shaven face. Clearly suffering from some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, he reaches for a pair of full-sized scissors. Eyes darkening with the thoughts of his impending messy divorce, the scissors raise, slowly, every so slowly, until the gleaming tip of the razor-sharp rear blade rests gently against the base of one nostril. With one thrust, it could all be over. He knows this. He's thought about this moment ever since the papers were filed...but he decides to try and trim his nose hair instead. Even that goes awry, as one snip too close results in a flash of pain, and a mild abrasion that will surely be a minor inconvenience for days to come. A look of supreme anguish flashes across the man's face, frozen in monochromatic still frame, as he realizes that even in this, a basic hygienic function, he has failed...
Alright, fine, I'm embellishing again. But dude really does come at his own nostril with gigantic scissors and gets this horrible look on his face, which has some kind of weird Jim Carrey-esque elasticity to it, when things don't go as planned. This shot is followed by him attacking the back of his neck with a straight razor, more grimacing, him shoving some kind of sharp implement into his ear, more grimacing...you get the idea. A man with the motor skills of a doped up chimpanzee has been given a tray of grooming implements and proceeded to injure himself in ways that I'm certain Amnesty International would be interested in hearing about.
Another flash add, this time of the trimmer, and suddenly he's completely hairless! An alopecia areata patient on the rampage with a tray of sharp objects he somehow acquired! Not really, but I can't stand this commercial so I'm trying to spice it up a bit! He uses the trimmer to fix his (nonexistent) unibrow, shave his (nonexistent) sideburns, and even shave his (nonexistent) beard before flashing a smug, shit-eating grin at the camera while a random woman paid to stroke his face earns her keep. It goes on to show him shaving his arms, his legs, and (I kid you not) his glory trail right on down past his waistband. The basic idea is unconditional "LOL hair removal." Provided, of course, that like the man in the commercial you didn't have any hair in these areas to begin with. Oh, also, it has a light! For...you know...night shaving. Except the light points straight out, on a product designed to hover above the surface that it's working on, so...good luck with that.
Look, fine, it seems to show SOME hair that looks to have been previously affixed falling away after a pass with the trimmer, albeit one square centimeter at a time. But every review you find online says that it binds up every few seconds on even the finest of hair textures. I take this personally, because I grow steel wool. You can get the tarnish off the bumpers of classic cars just by having me rub my face against them. I can get the grease out of a casserole dish by rubbing Dawn into my beard and motor-boating the sink. I can't even get more than two shaves out of the Gillette razors that are lined with the same industrial-grade diamonds they use to edge band saws with. My beard would yank this trimmer out of my hands and break it apart while I looked on in horror, just to send me a message.
I guess this commercial offends me more than the other two because the Ove Glove is ostensibly an improvement over a product that was shown being used properly, and the Chef Basket was a decent idea even if it was meant to replace the behavior of someone who apparently should never have been allowed in the kitchen, much less near a heat source. This thing is a downgrade from the options that already exist, with its artificial need being produced by a man all but ramming his face into an upturned lawn mower as a point of comparison. It's hard to argue with that logic, right? "Micro Touch Max, it's better than brutal decapitation!" Really this all comes down to my hatred of out of touch marketing, much less piss poor out of touch marketing. As previously mentioned, that's why these offshoots of old school infomercials seem to be much more prevalent during the day. Soap operas and shrieking harpies disable your defenses enough that this might, MIGHT just seem like a good idea.
What was the point of this post? Well, I'd be glad to tell you. Just send $14.95 to the address on your screen now, the first 500 customers will receive an extra moral lesson at absolutely no extra cost, you only pay e-shipping, act now and we'll throw in a tote bag, all this could be yours, your life is devoid of purpose without it, all your neighbors have one! Consume! CONSUME!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 - DVD box sets of the Jersey Shore and the decaying but still relatively intact husk of an As Seen on TV store will be all they need to justify having annihilated us to their media.
2 - Not making that part up...
3 - Just pay shipping and handling and processing on each separate unit, purchase implies user has agreed to continue to receive products on a 10 day billing cycle which their credit card will be charged for on an automatically renewing basis unless all products, UPC codes, packaging, materials, receipts, shipping invoices, and a lollipop are returned to Telebrands Plaza 48 hours prior to their arriving at your home, offer not good in any state containing an S, allow 6-24 months for delivery, do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
4 - I try not to stack footnotes too often, but those assholes get a blog of their own soon enough. Which may cause fainting, nausea, diarrhea, anti-social behavior, thoughts of suicide, thoughts of homicide, thoughts of regicide, thoughts of pesticide, grazing, narcoleptic fits, and uncontrollable flatulence.
5 - And provide little protection against homicidal pasta-addicted cats that are struggling to get by after ceasing to be funny about 20 years ago.
6 - Do we really still live in an age where every cooking product commercial must include only women, usually operating in an "Aww shucks, I'm barely competent enough to do that!" manner? Are we really still deluded enough to think it's only housewives in floral print dresses who are home in the middle of the day? Why can't a man cut his finger on a raggedy old knife, or look on despondently as the stains in his favorite shirt just won't come out? Huh?! Equality! Equality! Yeah, I'm not sure which side of the fence this footnote was supposed to be on, either.