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As Seen on TV: The 10 Most Laughably Misleading Ads

By Glenn Thompson December 31, 2007 1,165,039 views
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So you're an inventor, and you've just created a product that actually sucks quite a bit more than the ones people are already using. How do you sell it?

Why, by creating a cornball TV ad that portrays everyday tasks as being next to impossible without your product. As we'll see, the results range from ridiculous to downright sad.

#10.
MagneScribe Pen

What they're selling:
The MagneScribe is a magnetic pen which attaches to a pendant that's a combination digital clock and mirror that rocks a fly, Flava Flav look when not writing. It simultaneously maintains a perpetual state of writing-readiness and the ability to confirm whether someone is a vampire.

The hyperbole:
First, there is the sequence where someone is shown trying to unsuccessfully impale the cap of a normal pen, which suggests not only a lack of familiarity with pens, but also the visual-spatial reasoning ability of a pot-smoking chimp.

Then, when the lost pen lady finally responds to the "Call Now" command, she's placing her order and taking notes with ... a MagneScribe pen?

What the hell? We couldn't sleep for three days after we saw that. We kept picturing ourselves saying, "Man, I sure could use a MagneScribe about now," and then suddenly feeling a strange weight on our chest, the dangling pen was already laying gently against our belly. Oh, don't bother ordering the MagneScribe. It will find you.

Throughout the ad, we have the girl flailing around under a piece of furniture for her fallen pen, displaying both the poor vision and limited arm span of a T-Rex. Of course, the MagneScribe pen can't fall out of your hand; if you drop it the pen will come flying back through the air and re-attach itself to the magical pendant.

The reality:
They were selling this thing for $30. You know how many regular pens you can buy for thirty bucks? Three hundred.

You could keep a barrel of the things next to the sofa and every time you drop one, fuck it,grab a new one. But hell, even if the thing was free, having constant access to a pen in the off chance that we might need one isn't worth looking like a tool 100 percent of the time. It is a specific application of the more general 'fanny-pack' principle.

#9.
My Lil' Reminder

What they're selling:
A digital recorder, which is like an MP3 player except it records instead of playing back and can only hold one 30-second track so you can leave yourself reminders in audio form. "Shit, where did I put my digital recorder? Fuck!"

The hyperbole:
The scene opens with a senile grandma wandering around a parking lot. Weighing her options, which are searching for her car using a systematic procedure or talking to herself out loud before grabbing her head in frustration, she chooses the latter.

Sadly, if you're constantly forgetting things, lack the problem-solving skills to compensate, and cannot manage enough insight into your own uselessness to carry around a pen and paper with you at all times, then you may have advanced Alzheimer's Disease. You have no business wandering around a parking lot unescorted, let alone getting behind the wheel of a car or operating a digital recording device.

The reality:
We must admit, though, that the bit with the guy using it for storing driving directions was pretty convincing. If we ever sense that our ambient levels of smiling doucheness are running low, we'll be sure to place an order.

Of course, that's assuming the thing works properly. According to people who actually used the product:

"Piece of Junk"

"... you have to practically stick the thing inside your ear to hear it."

"On Friday I told my wife that she urgently had to get her medication from the pharmacy ... She recorded the message on her recorder (I saw her do it) ... she couldn't play back what was on the recorder. It was too late to go to any pharmacy ... My wife didn't get her medication. The funeral was Monday."

#8.
Handy Peel

What they're selling:
A pair of rubberish gloves with tiny sharp claws on the palms for peeling stuff and/or pretending to be a mutant around the kids.

The hyperbole:
Knife chick, here, is not an enthusiastic food preparer. We know this because her scenes are in black and white, and because she would seemingly rather look anywhere but at the knife she is wielding and the 1-inch-thick slices of potato she is lopping off. When the inevitable happens (she cuts herself), she is exasperated with the whole concept of this 2-million-year-old technology.

It's hard to say which is the saddest exaggeration here. Is it where they weigh up all of the money you'll save by not throwing away that extra bit of potato clinging to the skin, which would probably add up to around $4 worth over the course of a lifetime?

Or, is it 30 seconds later when they boast "No Messy Clean Up" over a shot of a potato-encrusted glove held under a stream of water that makes absolutely no progress toward removing the clumps of skin from the orange bristles?

The reality:
It's always shown peeling a vegetable that's clearly been pre-peeled, and that arouses our suspicion. The carrot scene left us aroused in a different way.

#7.
Listen Up

What they're selling:
Listen Up, a hearing aid for people who can't admit they need a hearing aid, has the added bonus of endowing users with super-hearing so that they can eavesdrop and generally hear things they aren't supposed to.

Hey, that's the My Lil' Reminder chick. The poor dear must have tried playing back her audio recordings only to discover that she was going deaf, too.

The hyperbole:
It starts with the old guy listening to the TV and then his radio too loud, then getting totally owned by his harpy of a wife. He takes it surprisingly well (his grin is slightly maniacal), perhaps because he couldn't hear what she was saying.

Then the whole thing strays into the reprehensible, when it boasts that you can eavesdrop on people's private conversations from "Up to 100 feet away."

Then there's a shot of an elderly couple using it in church. We found it weird that they would market their product to both eavesdroppers and church-goers in the same ad. But then isn't God the biggest spy there is?

The reality:
The false advertising is blatant. For example, the guy at the football game can apparently hear the quarterback call plays in the huddle from the stands. Unless the Listen Up is capable of some fancy Fourier analysis for isolating specific sounds, and you can be sure that it is not, then he would bleed from the ears due to amplified crowd noise before ever hearing a single call. The only reason his ears aren't bleeding is because, as the customer reviews can tell you, the piece of crap doesn't work:

"I feel like murdering all the guys who acted in the advertisement."

#6.
Easy Toothbrush

What they're selling:
Easy Toothbrush, an ordinary toothbrush with bristles organized so as to form a rounded surface, making it similar to several dozen toothbrushes you can buy at the grocery store.

The hyperbole:
Imagine if you will that you are a woman with dyed blonde hair and you have advanced gum disease due mostly to the fact that you have never seen, let alone used, a toothbrush. You now have some insight into "brush-chick," the star of this commercial.

The highlight comes about 7 seconds in, when brush-chick recoils in pain from incidental bristle contact, as if she were brushing with a steak knife. The point is hammered in several times as the voice-over repeats the word "hurt."

It gets better at about 9 seconds in, when brush-chick uses subtle non-verbal cues to communicate to her audience which toothbrush she prefers. The "conventional" toothbrush receives a look that is pregnant with contempt and scrotum-ablating scorn. In contrast, the "easy toothbrush" receives an appreciative head nod.

Interestingly, their entire concept is that because your mouth is round, your toothbrush should be round (as explained helpfully by the yellow geometric shapes above). By this logic, the Handy Peel up there should be shaped like a potato.

The reality:
It's a fucking toothbrush.

When that chef was saying how great the knife is for skinning fish or whatever, why didn't he use a f*****g fish? How is a tomato anything like a fish?

6/26/2009 8:36:01 PM
getcruunkk

Hahahaha Titty Bear? That is f*****g HILARIOUS

6/26/2009 8:15:43 PM
getcruunkk

Hey! You find doing jump rope is hard? Well try the New JUMPSNAP!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va2Ydlf2cqc&feature=channel_page

This should have made it

5/29/2009 9:41:10 PM
Nervous.Mill

How did they leave ou the wearable towel?
& the chick is toplesss?!?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjdyjL0dbG8

5/9/2009 10:41:51 PM
dmacdaddy

To: Dingo666

I remember the easy fold...actually..when I was about 10 or 11 I showed my mom how stupid the commercial was by making one out of a sheet of bristol board... It worked too, kept me from folding laundry til it ripped and I threw it out ^_^

5/3/2009 12:35:01 AM
trinigirl2001

My issue isn't so much the advertising to eavesdroppers and church-goers alike... My problem is, who goes to church wearing headphones? How is that OK?!

4/23/2009 12:44:15 AM
RaistliniltsiaR

you know thinking bout it who is the guy who does the voices on these ads? he is like a sign that this porduct wont work... so is billy maise for that matter...

later the people at the my lil reminder it seems posted 2 comments to say "dont read the other comments this pure gold". on the potato peeler, dude why not just eat the damn peels? i mean sure clean off the eyes. back when i was still nieve bout the workings of the world i bought something like a listen up... the feedback nearly killed me. the reason the guy isnt dieing from the crowds cheering is that he cant here anything but a high pitched squealing while thinking "why isnt this piece of s**t working"... also us church goers are probably the people most known for eavesdropping to gossip (i dont kid) my grandmother would one minute condemn those who where like this while the next telling anyone she could tell what my cousin was doing behind her husband's back... kinda a sad truth...

4/8/2009 10:20:22 AM
1r3gr37n0n

I so want them to review this thing [can't remember the name because it was so shite], easy fold or something, its a piece of plastic and you put a t-shirt in it and close the sides, which "folds" your clothes all nicely. What a waste of space and time and plastic...The TV ad was also atrocious, with clothes willy nilly lying on the shelves but after using the piece of plastic, they were all neat like in a shop...

4/1/2009 5:55:07 AM
Dingo666

ive always wanted the miracle blade knives.

3/27/2009 5:32:43 PM
bliss.

I agree with ultra_violet. The spokeswoman for comercial #2 seemed to really enjoy the Power Jet.

3/24/2009 11:58:28 AM
Sophmore

The Tiddy Bear!
I love it! I mean what the f**k!

3/16/2009 9:29:59 PM
thunderguppy

Oh, god. I think my Math teacher has a plastic rip-off magnescribe . . . It made me randomly laugh in the middle of class at my teacher, and no one knew what the hell I was laughing at.

3/12/2009 10:16:50 PM
J.D.Devereux

I am sad to report that my husband actually bought the Listen Up. It magnifies everything to the point that he can't use it. I can't sleep with noise so he thought "Gee, I'll spend 10 bucks on this and I can stay up to watch porn". Nope. It makes the heater so loud that he still can't hear the damn tv.

3/1/2009 6:19:02 PM
jenroack

Some of these ads are great.

2/26/2009 11:53:48 AM
AsSeenOnTV

Funniest article ever.

2/26/2009 1:22:25 AM
bpa1229

Hey I had those "Pasta Pro" pots for like four years and they worked awesome.

2/22/2009 1:29:17 AM
Chenzel05

It's funny to see how much some people suck at life in these commercials. The Miracle Blade lady who nicked a tomato's artery held the knife like a murderer then violently chop-sliced it, she is clearly as unstable as the car wash guy.

2/18/2009 1:44:00 AM
CrackedEgg

#7's comments are hilarious! "I bought this product because I saw it advertised on TV and thought that it would be great to hear people coming when I am in my room masturbating... I was wrong"

2/13/2009 11:54:12 PM
ijb

i've always wanted the listen up thing so that i can spy on people

2/13/2009 10:09:44 PM
porpoise-song

#2 was SO FUNNY

2/5/2009 2:02:54 PM
moogirl226