Stay Tuned/17 August 1997

Guess what? We're back.

Hopefully by next week the back-to-school advertising frenzy will begin and we won't have to go through a hiatus like that again.

Actually, the little "vacation" was probably good for me because I was beginning to lose my edge. For example, I started thinking along the lines of:

"Why bother talking about wretched excess? Wretched excess is too easy a target. All advertising is about wretched excess. If this society weren't committed to conspicuous consumption of everything possible, we wouldn't even have any advertising the way we know it today. If I pick on one ad for wretched excess, I have to pick on them all."

You see how burned out I was?

I had, of course, forgotten that while all advertising connotes a certain degree of cultural excess - seen any good burger ads in Djibouti lately? Of course not - some are way more egregious than others, and I should confine myself to the really atrocious examples.

But then I sound like a food zealot. Take the Cain's Mayonnaise ad for example:

"Nothing goes better with your 754th burger of the summer."

Now, I do appreciate the humor of this, really I do, but did it ever occur to anyone to question the idea of blindly scarfing down ground beef patties all summer? This isn't a health thing - I'd rather grill a hot dog or a steak, hardly healthier alternatives. It's more that the tag line has a built-in assumption of (excuse the pun) herd mentality in it, like we're forced to eat burgers every summer whether we like it or not.

And when did yogurt slip from being healthy food to trendy food? How did I miss this? When did we get yogurt packaged to go in kids' lunchboxes where the Libby's fruit cups and pudding cups used to be? And why on earth is Dannon making ungodly yogurt flavors like Caramel Apple Cinnamon and then packaging them with a little side container of caramel sauce to pour over the top and mix in?

Maybe it's just me. Yogurt is something healthy you eat in the morning. Unflavored, it's something you mix into some recipes, particularly Middle Eastern ones, to give the food body and tang. It's not a dessert.

See? Two weeks away hasn't made me any less cranky.

I've also noted a trend in ads that just baffle me - ads that are so far in left field that I don't even know how to begin firing upon them.

For example, a Mickey's Funline card that you hapless parents can purchase for your hapless kids. On first glance this looked like a prepaid phonecard for kids, and I was thinking cynical thoughts like "This is not the sort of consumption you want to encourage," and "Who are they going to call? Grandma?" and such.

Then I realized that what the card actually does is allow the kids to call up and have Mickey or Minnie tell them a story.

So it's not really a Disney phone card. It's more like a Disney phonesex card.

Exhibit B: Del Monte ketchup. Slogan: "It's Ketchup-ier!" Look, gents, if you paid someone to come up with that, then you might as well hire me. I work cheaper.

Exhibit C:

Put Sparkle Napkins in your summer plans!

Cookouts make the Great Outdoors great ... especially with Sparkle Napkins in your picnic basket! They're strong enough for those outdoor events - and so soft, they feel good on your face!

I might have gotten by with only a vague suspicion that the copywriters were aliens, until reaching the final nine words.

Exhibit D: Bounce fabric softener sheets are now billing themselves as a room deodorizer. They suggest you drop a sheet in the wastebasket, in closets, etc. A word of warning: Bounce is a sheet of fiber containing a fabric softener and a perfume. The fiber holds these chemicals in fairly poorly. Many people are allergic to contact with this stuff; even the ad itself warns (indirectly) that it can leave oily stains; and frankly, if you want to get rid of nasty odors, why are you using a hammer when the job requires a screwdriver?

Oh, shucks, I forgot to include a few pictures.

Okay, here you go.

Here's something you don't see every day - a brassiere to make breasts look smaller. Which is fine with me, but what's that 32B doing in there?

I am not entirely sure what bothers me about this juxtaposition (both ads are from the same company), but bother me it does.

A short column? Perhaps. But you wouldn't want me to come back up to speed all at once and maybe sprain something, now would you?

This hiatus caused by shortage of material is when I first began to consider that I might be using too narrow a focus.

and now back to our program

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