Advertising is the worst part of capitalism.
Take Gatorade, for example. Normal Gatorade isn’t good enough anymore. Now you need to drink Gatorade Fierce. As if the average Gatorade drinker lives on the top of a mountain and luges to work everyday. Can’t Gatorade drop all the extreme advertising and just name their drinks according to the flavor? What does “fierce” taste like?
If Gatorade really wanted to reflect the lives of their average consumers they’d manufacture a Gatorade Pansy. I already have a marketing pitch: “After a slightly tiring game of badminton, nothing quenches your thirst like a bottle of Gatorade Pansy.”
Oreos, however, are not extreme enough. Oreo product design hit a plateau with the Double Stuf Oreo.
Nabisco, I want an Oreo cream escalation like the one experienced in the shaving razor market over the past ten years, where we jumped from single bladed razors to five bladed, vibrating, aloe strip-moisturizing razors.
Where are the Quadruple Stuf and Octuple Stuf Oreos? Go ahead and get rid of the cookie ends altogether. I want to be able to buy entire sleeves of Oreo cream filling, separated only by a thin piece of wax paper. I also want to buy Oreo milk. Not Oreo milkshakes, Oreo milk. Oreo milk is regular milk 100% saturated with dissolved Oreo cookies. Nothing would taste better than a nice sleeve of Oreo cream washed down by a glass of Oreo milk.
In terms of specific commercials I loathe, the winner is the California cheese commercial where a bunch cows are standing around chatting during an earthquake. The commercial somehow explains that earthquakes make cows happy and happy cows make good cheese, so you should buy cheese from California.
Let me start off with the obvious fallacy in this commercial: California cheese is terrible. I could use rancid goat milk and make better tasting cheese than the stuff that comes from California.
Secondly, cows, like every living animal on this planet, are afraid of natural disasters. That is why they are called, disasters. Having the ground open up and swallow you whole is not something that can be used for a location selling point.
The best cheese comes from Wisconsin, which is located halfway between Chicago and the North Pole and can only be reached by riding on the back of a polar bear.
The most dreaded advertisements are the ones involving birth control, STDs, feminine hygiene products, weak erections, weak streams or weak bowels. This basically covers every type of commercial I see during my morning television ritual of watching Regis and Kelly, The Price is Right and Law & Order.
As far as birth control and STDs go, there are only two devices people purchase that absolutely need to be built solid: umbrellas and condoms.
Trojan and Durex can stop advertising. It’s common knowledge that people who buy crappy umbrellas are going to get wet and people who buy crappy condoms are going to, well, get wet.
We also don’t need to hear about every advancement in menstrual cycle management technology. I’m sure putting wings on a menstrual pad revolutionized the industry, but from now on, women can find out about the latest vaginal device breakthroughs at their knitting circles and Tupperware parties.
Lastly, people with embarrassing personal problems do not sit on their couches, hoping that the answer to their horrifying situation will come to them during a Grey’s Anatomy commercial break.
If you ever find yourself cursed with a disgusting condition that God himself would be ashamed to have, this is what you do: wait until 4 a.m. when everyone is asleep, log on to your roommate’s computer and Google irritable bowel syndrome until you can find a cure.
Then delete search history and, to make absolute certain that any traces of evidence linking you and your affliction are gone, hurl your roommate’s computer out the window. To satisfy anyone’s curiosity about the pile of shattered computers outside the west wall of my dorm, I’ve been having a painful time urinating ever since spring break.