Advertising and other stupid things

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I didn’t want to hijack the Toothbrush thread elsewhere so I’ll start a new one.

There was an article many years ago about TV and print ads. The amount of toothpaste shown on the brush was quite more than necessary. I remember suggestiosn that the paste be the size of a pea, not looking like a hot dog.

An oddity. ever notice the Bounty commercial where they accidently spill a liquid and it starts flowing towards the whits carpet or the lottery ticket. Someone grabs the paper towel and rather stopping the drip at the furthese point where it would do damage, they wipe the spill towards the thing they are trying to protect.

Companys come up with terrific ways to either hide things from consumers or increase sales. It was common to add a word to the directions… REPEAT… and sales might double. I called a shampoo manufactorers helpline and asked why the word repeat was used. The rep started talking about the first application broke down the oil and the second application washed away the oil and debris, etc. I suggested the product was too weak to do the job it you had to use twice as much. They sent me a coupon for more shampoo.

Companys will change the ingredients slightly or more importantly the size and then it become NEW and IMPROVED.

When a product line or company is sold, the new owner, in my opinion, starts cost cutting. The taste usually gets worse and the price will then go up. An example, Marie Collanders Fettucine Alfreado Dinners. They included ‘spice packs’ which were salt and pepper packets. When the comapny was sold, those packets stopped being included. Granted that particular change was probably less than a part of a penny per dinner but they were gone. Then the flavor changed enough that I started just making my own sauce and stopped buying the dinners.

There are targeted ads which look at your location and display an ad that has nothing to do you where you are. You could be living in a rural farming are and see ads touting people in mansions. I live in a very rural farming area with a town the size of a post office. I see ads for tremendous work opportunities listed here. Really? 12 sq miles and 4300 people and one traffic light at the edge of town.

[edit] I have some delay or a bad keybord. Sometiumes I have t oedit a post to correct spelling or the odd location of a space :slight_smile:

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Funny, just read an article about this

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Glad to know it’s not me. I figured getting older so my taste buds are changing, because many long time fav foods don’t taste the same.

So, it’s not just me

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Although he takes a while to get to it, this guy explains dishwasher detergent.

Using pods may have issues. They are designed to work for most people which means the most detergent for hard water (because the detergent also usually contains water softeners). So you are probably using way too much detergent than needed. Using a less amount might work just as well or better.

It is like gasoline octane, where you lower the octane until your performance suffers then go up slightly. Modern cars have anti-knock ability so you might not hear it. In fact I had a high performance car that worked quite well on 87 octane and in fact at one time I found one spark plug fouled and the computer adjusted for it and I didn’t know I had 1/8 of the plugs pretty useless.

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Liquid hand soap dispensers typically provide 4x-10x as much as you need to wash your hands. Follow the money.

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Trying to avoid HFCS. Hard to do. My favorite pop growing up is blah now and filled with HFCS. The Gnomes are in jail and the Trolls have ruined the product - which used to be offered up for upset stomachs, sore throats - and also parties :-). used to eat a certain Key Lime Pie, but now it has HFCS causing it to taste funny and cause headaches in my friend that is sensitive to processed corn products. This has been going on for a very long time. Had a great recipe for a dessert using Piilsbury chocolate frosting - first they reduced the size of the box, and then the changed to the overly processed canned stuff. And, my mom was given a special recipe for a chocolate cake to “keep her marriage strong” - made it for my dad for his birthday every year. One year when I was in (I think) grade school, dad complained she didn’t make “his” cake. Turns out they had reduced the chocolate in chocolate…Now I try to avoid a lot of sweets, but when I want a treat, I want a treat and not another disappointment of degraded ingredients/product.