h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Now, I'm not one for watching adverts, that's why the remote was invented. But something caught my eye yesterday which meant I HAD to look,as I couldn't believe the name of the product.

There is this gadget thing to put in your hair (aimed at women and hippies with uncontrollable fringes, I think) that is supposed to give you loads of different styles. So far, so useless, right? Anyhoo, the product is called.... BUMPITS!

Now, watching with the sound down, my imagination broke this word down as...

BUM

PITS

and not the sort of thing I'd want in my hair, no thank you very muchly!!!

Is this the worst case of bad advertising ever, or are there some better examples of where a booze fuelled lunch has resulted in the marketing department peeing themselves laughing at the name, but the powers that be have blindly let it through??

Your thoughts, please.

well, I bought a six pack of a childrens mostly sugar drink called 'boobee' yesterday. I couldn't resist!

I'm going to give boobees to all my friends!

Boobee! Sounds wonderful. What shape were the bottles??? Fnar fnar!!

Kind of rounded ended cylinders with a built in bendy straw at one end. I think you're supposed to cut the end off but we all know you're *really* meant to chew it off messily...

They are really pointless but funny

Most of the best things in life are pointless. And messy.

Well, they are in my life, anyway.

Agreed

I just asked the tea-lady if she had any Boobees.

I certainly wasn't expecting that slap!


Was there ever a beer on the market called "Plop", or did I imagine it?

Hm, I have no idea. I expect so, somewhere in norfolk. Or perhaps a cider from down my way...

< Or perhaps a cider from down my way... >

Do you mean the Co-op?? Or is it a geographical clue? Hereford, or further south. Do you pronounce the product as "sigh-der", or "zoi-der"???

Being born in Aylesbury as I was, I say sigh-der, however my neighbours all call it soyderrr. I'm well entrenched into the south west of england. South of gloucester, west of swindon... But not as deep south as Cheddar. A touch too close to wales, but we survive...

<>

I feel sorry for all those people in Wales - they say an area thew size of Wales is deforested every week, or an area the size of Wales falls away from Antarctica every month. What do all the Welsh do when they get chopped down or fall into the Antarctic Ocean?

But I digress.

Bad advertising?

Every bloody Clairol ad that was ever invented. They are appalling. And all those 'Because you're worth it' rubbish, too.
Oh yes, and those stupid Citroen Picasso adds that had the car transforming itself into a sort of robot.

After extensive research- ok, so I 'binged' it- I have found that Plop beer is from an episode of Men Behaving Badly. Not a dodgy cider from Norfolk.

Remember the "Sunny D" adverts? Kids running around like demented pixies, overdosing on sugar and E numbers!! Whatever happened to that great taste??

There's a commercial on here in the States (not sure about Britain or not) for a product called Head On. It's for headaches, and you put it on, you guessed it, your head. The commercial feature a bunch of angry people complaining about the commercials and repeating the same thing over and over again. I seriously want to punch someone in the gizzard after being subjected to it. I once threw my remote across the room when the commercial came on, I blipped up to the next channel to find the same commercial, blipped up to the next channel to find an old sitcom just going to commercial and, wham-o, the same commercial again.

Cheers
Mark

No, Mark, I don't believe we've had the pleasure of seeing that one over here, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

Can someone please tell Garnier that Ra-paedo is a very unfortunate name for a childrens sun tan lotion.

You can see why they called it that though. Ra as in the Egyptian god of the sun. Paedo as in the greek(?) word for child. And put together it sounds like its going to act quickly - rapido!

It's just that the word paedophile is though shortened (in newspaper headlines) to paedo. But that's just because they have enough trouble spell the first part, and can't even contemplate the spelling of the rest of it.


Geggs

that head-on stuff is a sort of menthol stick for your forehead isn't it? Apparently it's quite good.

Anyway, the ad I saw for it was not too bad.

I preferred it to the ads telling you to just take some medicine (coughs, colds, headaches, whatever...) and carry on being everything to everyone rather than having some rest, drinking plenty of fluids and hopefully not spreading your germs or ending up dropping everything for a long time through stress or depression in the long run!

Two of my favorite named products are:
Old Fart (a beer don't know if it still exists or who made it).
Cripple Cock (a very strong cider which quite aptly does what it says on the bottle... err used to drink it in Torquay back about ten years ago...)

We designed a washing powder and marketing for it, the washign pwder was called Krap2000 ... (this was a school project thing... well it amused us as quite young children at the time)... Somhow I don't think the name would have worked in the real world market

There is an advert currently running with a character called Juan Shit. No idea what it's advertising- food poisoning at a guess!

I not the only one who hears it like that?