….and I don’t mean “disgusting” in a Tyra Banks “you look so fashionable” way. Take the new Pepto ad, below, which is based around the concept of farting in someone’s face. There are a lot of ways to illustrate how bad it is to have gas, like illustrating the searing gas pain the flatulence sufferer must endure, but the guys at Pepto went for the tried and true face fart joke. Dudes, Chaucer totally did it first.
Second in our continuing series of terrible ads is Philips Colon Health, which earned a spot on the worst list by being completely shameless about discussing, well, colon health. It’s one thing to tastefully let us know that there’s a product to help our ass worries, but it’s quite another to act like the people in the video below.
It’s that time of year at last, the time where we all look back at the trainwreck of a year we just survived and rummage through the debris for something worth praising or mocking. That, or writing best and worst lists on crappy internet sites. For now, I’m working on the worst, and my first nominee is….
This one’s a no-brainer (or a no-eyeballer, depending on the side effects). The idea that anyone would want to take a bunch of pills to make their eyelashes grow is really creepy. I’ll bet they’re real estate agents and office managers and shit too…nothing glamorous.
There will be a poll thingy to vote on the worst ads at the end of the year!
Usually when I get heartburn, I turn to good old Pepto, mostly because I like the taste and texture better than any other stomach remedy. Have you ever tried Mylanta? Shudder. It has the consistency of something I won’t mention in polite company, and the taste of death. But Tums would probably be my backup plan if the world ever ran out of Pepto Bismol (and a terrifying world that would be). They’re certainly better than those ones that take forever to work, Prilosec or whatever.
Regardless, I like Tums ads because they’re simple and they show appetizing-looking food sometimes. Like in the one where the guy is standing in the rain gazing longingly at a cheesesteak store. Then he remembers that he can just take medicine when it wakes up his terrible stomach problems, so he goes in and chows down. I don’t care about his stomach problems, I just like looking at delicious cheesesteaks.
But this bear commercial is clearly their best, because it stars a bear. And the bear gets heartburn! That is one smart yet destructive beast.
When people are hesitant to take antidepressants or other psychological drugs, they usually say something like, I don’t want to be a robot, or, I don’t want to lose my individuality and what makes me unique. That kind of thing.
Well, this semi-new ad for Pristiq, an antidepressant, turns that very fear into a misguided visual metaphor. A woman has a wind-up toy version of herself that she has to keep cranking up whenever it stops. Then she takes pills, I guess, and the mechanical toy marches on confidently. Then she gazes at it and smiles in a really dopey way.
But does anyone want to be compared to an automaton, a cog in society, a robot that must be made to fall into line and march like sheep to the slaughter? It seems like entirely the wrong message to send. And apparently, this robotic mascot isn’t going anywhere.
This one is a classic. No matter how many times I see it, it’s still hilarious. “Flatulent in three languages,” “your son Rip is on line toot,” etc. Pure comic gold!
Complaining about deceptive pharmaceutical ads is a little like complaining about dishonest politicians, but when you consider that some people are stupid enough to actually believe what is said in these drug ads, it’s a little more worrisome.
For instance, having taken Ambien once and watched my friends use it (purely recreationally), I now know that it is a devil drug from hell, and nobody should ever take it. It would be fun if you remembered the hardcore tripping out and hallucinations you undergo while on it, but once you ’sober up,’ you have absolutely no memory of the five hours or so you spent acting like a crazy person. One of my friends watched in horror as the posters around her room started to interact, and she claimed with all seriousness that the lamp was planning an attack on her laundry hamper. But, again, she had no memory of any of it once she snapped out of it. In the ads, they try to downplay the hallucinations, sleep walking, sleep driving, and other crazy things people do (i.e. eat cigarettes) while they’re on the drug, but selling the thing in the first place seems like a recipe for disaster. As far as I know, the drug doesn’t actually make you fall asleep, but actually makes you start dreaming awake. Scary stuff.
But that’s not the only deceptive ad out there. Some, like the Yaz ad that had to be retracted, and the Lipitor ads with the fake doctor, have become big news, but others continue to get away with misleading claims and unclear information. There’s a great article in the LA Times about this subject from earlier this month, and a Time Magazine video below also tackles the issue. Enjoy!
P.S. If anyone can locate a copy of the Lipitor “I never thought it could happen to me…heart attack at 53″ ad, give me the link. I like how it rhymes and sounds like the beginning of a country song.
Have you seen the new TV ad for Latisse, a magical eyelash growing serum that promises to help women (or men, I suppose) regrow missing lashes and/or lengthen and thicken their existing lashes? It’s downright terrifying.
Brooke Shields stars in the commercial, which makes me wonder why she’s been receiving so much exposure lately. I don’t know exactly who’s behind her return to celebrity status, but I have some questions for them.
Anyway, Brooke’s involvement is irrelevant, because the product itself is what’s disturbing. The ad promises that Latisse will give you amazing huge eyelashes, but also warns that side effects include skin discoloration on your eyelid which MIGHT go away over time. And that’s not all. They also mention (I’m not kidding) that your eyes might permanently turn brown. Yes, your very irises. Brown. Forever. What??
This sounds like such a bad idea. And they’re marketing it like a beauty product, even though it’s a prescription drug. This is far worse than when they marketed medicine for Restless Leg Syndrome to the public in a deceptive way that made it seem like it was for anyone who was remotely fidgety. This is something normal everyday women who wear mascara or false lashes for an extra boost will think they need, and then we’ll find out that it actually blinds people and Latisse is going to have one major class action lawsuit on their hands. Or not, I just like to think about worst case scenarios. Like how I firmly believe that sunless tanner is going to turn out to cause skin cancer, and deoderant breast cancer, and birth control pills everything cancer. Either way, there’s no way in hell I’m putting this crazy crap on my eyes.
Another commercial from the TMI file, this is the original Pepto Bismol song and dance commercial. And by dance, I mean the dancers mime various digestive problems. It’s bizarre and disturbing, but now that Pepto has moved on to other advertising tactics, I kind of miss the dancing spots. Strange how that happens.
I thought Yaz was a dumb enough product as is, back when it was just a crappy birth control pill with delusions that it could cure PMS. But then they got busted by the FDA and had to issue a retraction commercial, and now they’re just ridiculous. I love the way they act as if it’s no big deal that they’ve been ordered to stop lying about the benefits of their drug. Yaz isn’t as bad as the pills that claim to stop your period, while still admitting that you will experience heavy spotting where your period used to be (and for the uninitiated or male, spotting just means getting your period). But it’s still annoying, especially because their name sucks. Yaz. Sounds like a newfangled way to say “yeah” to me.
There have been so many bladder control ads on TV lately, and not just for adult diapers like Tena (lousy quality video, only for reference). Now they’re advertising drugs that suppress your urges to pee, like Enablex. To me, Enablex sounds like something Lindsay Lohan would slip her friends, but that’s a whole other point. Once they start rattling off the side effects of relaxing your pee muscles, I have to wonder who would actually go for such a “cure.” Sounds like bad news all around.
Considering all the constipation relief products that have been so hot lately, all these bladder control ads beg the question, as posed by my boyfriend, “People want to poop more but urinate less?”
Here is one of Enablex’s questionable ads, wherein a bunch of water balloons have a high school reunion. They’re asking for trouble, if you ask me.
Woman have worked hard to overcome the stereotype that we’re whiny, naggy, shrill, and obsessed with our periods. Then along comes this Midol ad to erase all of our progress with one sentence: “My uterus is falling out!!”
Besides not doing anything for our cause, that uterus statement is disturbing. What kind of cycles is this woman having? She might want to see a doctor about that.
There’s a laxative ad that’s been playing pretty regularly (heh heh, regularly) on TV lately. The product is Senokot-S, which I’m sure is a fine and effective constipation relief product. But the commercial’s narrator says “S” in a way that it sounds just like “Ass,” so when he says “Senokot-S tablets” or “Senokot-S” it sounds like “Senokot ass tablets” or “Senokot Ass.” It’s enough to make me look up from what I’m doing every time. And to top it off, I didn’t realize the pills were for constipation until I rewatched the ad today, and that just makes it like ten times funnier. They ARE ass tablets!
P.S. I would have posted a video if I could find one…if you can locate one, please post it in the comments!
They’re totally lame. There have been some fairly innovative anti-drug ads lately, like “Stoners in the Mist,” this amazing series of online potheads-as-safari-animals shorts on the website AbovetheInfluence.org.
But this steroid shit is a straight-up throwback to the after-school specials I grew up with, and demonstrates that annoying tendency ads aimed at ’straightening up’ tweens have where they use a totally hip and with it tone to try to fool the kids into thinking something entertaining is about to happen, then they preach at you a little without giving you any solid reasons you shouldn’t do the specific drug (unless it’s a gross-out tactic like showing you a rotting corpse’s lung). No, they don’t give you facts, they just keep saying that your life is like a thousand times more meaningful if you play soccer and act really smug about being straight edge, as opposed to smoking the occasional joint and/or having a beer or two on a night out. Have you ever actually met a straight-edge person? I don’t mean like your aunt who doesn’t drink because she’s past the age of doing anything fun, I mean someone young and at the height of their life who won’t so much as take a hit off a cigarette on a Saturday night. Did you ever notice that there’s something all of these holier-than-thou straight-edgers have in common? That’s right, they’re big, fat, LOSERS.
So naturally, I now assume that steroids are actually not that bad for you and the government just wants to keep them away from us because they’re like magical candy that gives you superpowers. Now if only I worked out or had any reason to care about muscle mass. Oh well, I’ll just stick to my current exercise regimen: the 6 blocks to the subway twice a week on my way to the bar plan. I think it’s working!
