In his frequently-amusing "Below The Beltway" essay in The Washington Post magazine last week, Gene Weingarten pointed out that Q-Tips boxes have pictures of women using the product near their eye and babies being swabbed on the side of the nose. He notes that the box warns you not to put it in your ear canal, and points out that this is precisely the way that most people use this product. For me, that's pretty much exclusively the way I use them. He suggested that they just come clean and use a "stick it in your ear" marketing slogan.
This led to a brief discussion. Are there any other products out there that are mostly used for exactly the reason the manufacturer tells you not to? Would a package of clothespins show them being used to keep bags of chips closed, as a money clip, or suggesting that they're excellent for, um, "consenting adult playtime", but warn you that under no circumstances whatsoever should you hang your wet clothes with them?
It's like those vibrator packages that have pictures of women massaging their necks with the things.
Yaright.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Randomness II
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8 comments:
Not exactly what you're looking for, but how many times have you seen people standing on the top of the ladder to reach their target, despite five pounds and sixteen linear feet of warning stickers telling them not to stand any higher than the third step from the top?
Oh yeah. Idiocy in the face of good advice is another whole blog subject, which I'm sure has been covered many times.
funny - you are right though
laughing at the vibrating thing - there is a sex and the city episode about that
You know, being a Y-chromosome enhanced person, I've never seen a single episode of Sex & The City. I've tried to watch it. I've wanted to be in on the phenomenon. Just doesn't do it for me. Glad I've got the same ideas as some top TV writers, though.
I remember once my father saw a commercial on t.v. (a co-worker's daughter starred in it) for some reason I think it was for the soap, Irish Spring. In the ad, a person was cutting the soap with a paring knife, cutting towards themselves, and my father contacted the company and pointed out that people didn't use a knife in that direction for obvious reasons. They reshot it.
Actually, I find it rather amazing that they fixed it. If I made a phone call every time I saw something wrong in a commercial, I wouldn't have any time to do anything else.
What? I cut soap toward me all the time.
"Three Fingers McGee" - *snort*
Is "cutting the soap" some sort of euphemism?
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