Conference hydra::dave_barry

1035.0. "TV Commercials Survey, Part 2: Most Hated Commerical" by ORION::chayna.zko.dec.com::tamara::eppes (Nina Eppes) Tue Feb 11 1997 15:48

Dave Barry
February 9, 1997

Last week I promised that in today's column I would announce which commercial,
according to my survey, you readers hate the most. So if you have an ounce of
sense or good taste, you'll stop reading this column right now.

Really, I mean it . . .

This is your last chance . . .

You're making a HUGE mistake . . .

OK, you pathetic fool: The most hated commercial of all time, according to the
survey, was the one for Charmin featuring "Mr. Whipple" and various idiot
housewives who lived in a psycho pervert community where everybody was
obsessed with squeezing toilet paper -- or, as they say in Commercial Land,
"bathroom tissue." Americans still, after all these years, feel more hostility
toward that ad campaign than they ever did toward international communism.

Of course some people will say: "But those ads sold a lot of Charmin!"

Yes, and the Unabomber produced high-quality, hand-crafted letter bombs. But
that doesn't make it right.

The Mr. Whipple ads are related to a whole category of commercials that,
according to the survey, people really detest -- namely, commercials that
discuss extremely intimate bodily functions and problems, often at dinnertime.
People do not wish to hear total strangers blurting out statements about their
constipation and their diarrhea and their hemorrhoids and their "male itch."
People do not wish to see scientific demonstrations of pads absorbing amazing
quantities of fluids. People also cannot fathom why this fluid is always blue.
As Carla and Bill Chandler put it: "If anyone around here starts secreting
anything BLUE, the last thing we're going to worry about is how absorbent
their pad is."

People do not wish to hear any more about incontinence. Rich Klinzman wrote:
"I have often fantasized about sneaking up behind June Allyson, blowing up a
paper bag, and slamming my fist into it, just to see how absorbent those adult
diapers really are."

People also do not wish to see actors pretending to be mothers and daughters
talking about very personal feminine matters as though they were discussing
the weather. Richard J. O'Neil, expressing a common sentiment, wrote: "If I
was a woman, I would walk on my lips through a sewage plant before I would
share this kind of information with any living soul, let alone my mother."

People do not wish to see extreme close-ups of other people chewing.

People are also getting mighty tired of the endlessly escalating, extremely
confusing war of the pain relievers. At one time, years ago, there was just
aspirin, which was basically for headaches; now, there are dozens of products,
every single one of which seems to be telling you that, not only is it more
effective than the other ones, but also the other ones could cause a variety
of harmful side effects such as death. It seems safer to just live with the
headache.

Many survey respondents were especially scornful of the commercials suggesting
that you can undergo an actual surgical procedure, such as a Caesarean
section, and the only pain medication you'd need afterward is Tylenol. As Gwen
Marshall put it: "If my doctor had given me Tylenol and expected me to be
pain-free and happy, I'd have jumped off of that lovely table that holds your
legs 10 feet apart, grabbed the 12-inch scalpel out of his hand and held it to
his throat until I got morphine, lots of it."

Another type of advertising that people detest is the Mystery Commercial, in
which there is no earthly way to tell what product is being advertised. These
commercials usually consist of many apparently random images flashing rapidly
past on the screen, and then, at the end, you see a Nike swoosh, or the IBM
logo, or Mr. Whipple.

People are sick and tired of seeing actors pretend to be deeply emotionally
attached to their breakfast cereals. People also frankly do not believe that
the woman in the Special K commercials got to be thin and shapely by eating
Special K. Patricia Gualdoni wrote: "I have eaten enough Special K cereal to
sink a battleship, and I look a lot more like a battleship than the woman in
the ad."

People are also skeptical of the Denorex shampoo commercials. "How do we know
that that tingling sensation isn't battery acid eating through your scalp?"
asked Alyssa Church.

Here are just a few of the other views expressed by the thousands of readers
who responded to the survey:

-- Andy Elliott wrote: "I hate radio ads that say, `Our prices are so low, we
can't say them on the radio!' WHY??? Will people start bleeding from the ears
if they hear these prices?"

-- Michael Howard wrote: "I live near Seattle and there is one channel that
runs commercials approximately every five minutes advertising the fact that
they have a helicopter. Can you believe it? A helicopter!"

-- A.J. VanHorn theorized that "the increase in suicides among young people is
due to the beer commercial showing a bunch of rednecks in a beat-up pickup
swigging beer from cans and telling everyone `It don't git no better 'n this.'"

-- Kathy Walden objected to "Wal-Mart commercials that shamelessly try to
portray all Wal-Mart customers as poor, uneducated, rural and concerned
primarily with reproducing themselves. Of course this is true, but STILL . . ."

There were many, many more strong comments, but I'm out of space. So I'm going
to close with a statement penned by a reader identifying himself as "Flat Foot
Sam," who I believe spoke for millions of consumers when he wrote these words:

"I'd like to buy the world a Coke,

"And spray it out my nose."