Buyer Beware

Have you ever considered that truth in advertising is dead? Consider for a moment you are an advertising executive, and your only job was to tell the truth versus lying. Could you keep your job? Could you simply write a truthful ad about Quaker Oats that says something like, "does this crap taste good; nobody knows but at least the box is cute." Consider for a moment also the weather man, do you think your boss would keep you if you were correct only 50% of the time? Hasn't the truth recently just become a radical and unused concept or just one of the seven signs of the apocalypse? The truth has now just become a whisper as opposed to lies in terms of selling useless products to us. Every time you pick up a tube of toothpaste, a roll of toilet paper, or a can of soda, if you listen closely, you can hear a whisper of the truth over lies being told through bass driven rap music. When uncle Snoop Dog sings it, it might sound cooler but that doesn't make it truer. Also, hot women in French bikinis bob sledding are just a distraction from real life, in real time. We all know it, but it's possible it's just more fun to ignore it. And just remember, even those curvaceous women are airbrushed and will one day be in their 50's with stretch marks like the rest of us. Sometimes we forget that curves are nothing more than padding for a child, consider it a bit like thick rubber for a bumper car.

What exactly is the truth about toilet paper? As near as I can tell it's just a super-duper pooper scooper that keeps us from using our hands like they do in third world countries. Yes, when you go to these places, shake someone's hand, only to look down and see that they have brown stuff under their fingernails don't be shocked. When it comes to TP all this talk about pillowy softness and muti-plies is just made to reinforce to American's that we are spoiled brats. When my grandparents were coming up in the dust bowl days of Western Kansas, they were lucky to get the paper pages out of the Sears and Roebuck catalog. The glossy ones just didn't clean the necessary nether regions quite as well which is understandable. In tougher years they resorted to using dried corn cobs, talk about coming down with a true case of the red ass. The point is the further we drive into the future the softer Americans get, and the further away they get from the realizations of the hardships of our ancestors. Trust me when I say there IS a benefit in knowing where we came from. As a people we have spent the past 2,000 years or so perfecting living indoors with creature comforts like A/C, indoor plumbing, electricity, food refrigeration, and clean comfortable beds. Yet there are still people who will choose just the opposite on a family vacation. I have but one question... WHY? I realize that a vacation should be a break from the everyday grind but does sleeping on the ground with your head propped up on a rock sound like fun to you. To me that sounds like the opposite of a vacation, it sounds a bit like a prison sentence.

Now, back to advertising. If a man can get help with the lemon law on a car that is prone to problems the minute, he drives it off the lot, why can't he get something to cover a defective 6-pack of underwear? Sure, it's a smaller investment, but isn't bologna just the poor man's version of steak? When a man tries to pull on a new pair of underwear for the first time and the waistband gives, that's a problem. How many times have you men seen a busty blonde in a string bikini advertising a line of tools and felt compelled to buy them? It's just one of the many downfalls of being a male and we are all guilty of it. There is just enough blood in the male body to use one head at time but NEVER at the same time. This is not so much the human condition as it is a male problem. Face it guys, women are often smarter than we are because they aren't driven internally by massive amounts of unchecked hormones.

Last time I sat down to dinner and had a box of crackers I read the following caption printed on the box. "Life should be savored. The laughter and warmth when family and friends gather. The sweet solitude of me-time, so precious and rare." It occurred to me after reading this the caption would have fit just as well on a cheesy Hallmark card or even in a eulogy. I recently saw this on a cup of yogurt, "Glamorous on the outside and sweet on the inside. If the fruits of the world held a pageant, the pineapple would end up wearing a tiara on its leafy crown." OH, COME ON, do you mean to tell me there wasn't even one person at that pitch table that looked up from their stale cheese Danish and scoffed? This kind of advertising has a two-fold effect on me, #1) it insults my intelligence, and #2) it makes me wonder what kinds of consumers are buying this brand of excrement. There is really only one thing that can truthfully be said about yogurt, it's white, cold, tasteless, but it fills the void.

I also recently saw a commercial for a pheromone where a man claimed if he dabbed a little on the back of his neck it would drive his wife crazy. Yea, there is another product that works just as well you fool, it's called soap. If a man has to resort to a pheromone to get his wife's motor running there is a problem, don't our bodies make those naturally? As a man this is all we need to do, get the occasional haircut and shave, cut our fingernails with something other than a set of gardening shears, occasionally use shampoo, and WITHOUT FAIL, ALWAYS use deodorant.

Here is another advertising caption that left me scratching my head, "burnt hot dogs, running lawn mowers, rain, and really short shorts. You won't find any of these things in our smoothies, but you will find our very own delicious take on summer." I am somewhat uncomfortable using the word smoothie and short shorts in the same sentence but there it is anyway. If I were presented with this ad by an executive, I would politely remind the employee that pot in Oklahoma has not (YET) been made for recreational purposes. I say it is time we just tried some truth in advertising like "THE PORCHE, for aging men who are losing their hair and want hand jobs from women they barely know." How about this one: "Irish Spring, it won't solve world hunger, but it DOES make your pits smell like a romp in an Irish forest." Or, if that doesn't suit you how about this: "Enjoy a Jello chocolate pudding cup at face value, but if the commercials of the 80's creep into your mind try desperately to forget that Bill Cosby is a rapist." Listen, none of us know if it's true or not, but nearly 70 women came forward so if only half of them is telling the truth that is still a lot of lethal date-rape cocktails. I'm just saying.