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

Ooh, that was all wrong... What I meant was that they aren't the most attractive and classy-looking ladies I've ever seen... Their original/current gender didn't have a bearing on their products... It's the look I was trying to about... All two tone lippy and badly bleached hair on faces that are probably a lot prettier when they arent trying to look 'sexy'


The point about advertising working is a good one... I agree, it MUST be working if it's still being paid for. And lets face it, without those faceless consumers, this thread wouldn't be nearly as much fun!

New Fibre-Sure! Dissolves completely in water, and doesn't taste of anything. Accompanied by film of women floating about in water. Apparently it makes you feel "lighter".

Is this another of those products to make women poo properly? I wasn't entirely sure what it was for...

RF

I think it's another one of those products that allow stupid people to get necessary stuff in their bodies without actually eating.

Herself, who is quite shrp about these things, pointed out a classic one a few years ago.

Does anyone remember the adverts for a girly drink called Reef? The advertisers were trying to present it as THE drink for the independent sassy girl-about-town who takes no $hit from anybody. The only problem was, tthe girlsd in the advert came over as being TOO independent and self-reliant... it was all to do with the way the advert was cut.

A bunch of attractive twenty-something women in sarongs and bikini tops are setting out to sea, somewhere in the South Pacific. They are seen to be loading their ship with all essential supplies for the voyage, prominent among which are many crates of Reef. (enough, in fact, to sink a hen night).

oh-oh, what's this in the net of supplies they are hauling up... MEN? The camera cuts to a male, thin, wearing glasses, who the wife said was not unattractive in a skinny gangling Louis Theroux sort of way. He is seen to smile appeasingly and look cute. (Behind him are other men of the classical male stripper type). The girls are seen to confer and shake their heads. In long shot, we then see a male figure being thrown back over the side to hit the water with a loud and very final splash. the ship then sets sail with jolly ladies passing glasses of reef out to each other. End of advert.

Now what that scene was probably MEANT to convey was that they had hauled in a netload of men as comfort slaves for the voyage (the male strippeer types) and the skinny gangly nerdy one in the specs had been rejected by Quality Control. all in keeping with the desired projected image that Reef is a drink for strong independent women who are in control of their own destinies.

But as Herself pointed out, the way the advert was cut made it look as if they'd thrown ALL the men off. The nerdy type was simply not sub-standard enough to reinforce the point that "if you don't look like a Chippendale, you have no business approaching a Reef girl".

The overall impression was that Reef drinkers are women who are so self-sufficient and independent that they have no need for men at all - and who were sailing away into the Pacific sunset on the SS Sappho.

As herself put it, the lesson of the advert was "Reef is a drink for commited lesbians". She pointed out that if the guy they threw off the ship had looked less like Louis Theroux (who she secretly fancies) and more like, say, Johnny Vegas, it would have made the desired point.

Instead, the subliminal message was "this is a drink for women who are not interested in men".

Interestingly enough, there was a long running discussion forum on the old Channel Four talkboards called "Cheesiest adverts?" where the best and worst telly advertising was discussed. We long suspected that at least one ad agency had cottoned onto this and was using our thoughts as a sort of unpasid focus group (one or two people only logged on to this discussion thread and they didn't feel kosher - as if they were trying to ask questions and steer the discussion to specific adverts).

Within three weeks of her opening a discussion on the Reef advert as summmarised above, it had dissappeared off TV screens... we still wonder who was reading the forum.

<>

Well, it's not a secret any more!

that tasteless stuff is just a fibre drink, so yes,, it's for stuffed up women who are so emotionally challenged that they cant even poo properly... And for those who think that laxatives are a healthy, safe and effective way of losing weight I think...

Any advert for product which liquifies the solid waste of people who can't poo properly. Particularly ones in which the starlet of the thirty second* performance carries her waste around in her handbag!

*half a minute, not 32nd!

I find the whole issue turgid.

That very dizzying Virgin Trains with a cartoon Message Through A Tunnel sequence - Go Greener, Go Cheaper, Go Blind!

and there's the "new" Orbit chewing gum with Xylitol.
Xylitol
So what is Xylitol?
sugar.

Right the new Cadbury's commercial with a gorilla playing the drums to a playback recording of Phil Collin's to a Phil Collin's song.



What has this got to do with chocolate?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TApA1fyoSdk

That moment, that perfect moment when you feel the damn stuff sit on your tounge, when you expect it to be perfect, that your troubles will fall away... That hit you get, the taste, the texture... And I'm a bloke!

I think the idea of playing a Phil Collins song is
some kind of aversion therapy for aholics.

Newest entry: Pot noodle, now with Salt Removed
Yep. And the they now taste fecking foul because they have!

orange juice-sized carton of mars milky drink, b) Maybe they meant that it makes you horny/strengthens sperm?
Nope, that'd be potassium, mainly found in things like bananas.

wha?

I was being facetious... 'Family fuel' i.e. makes you want to make families...

Regarding things like FibreSure or BeneFibre, I did some research. A 195g pack of FibreSure costs something like £8. You use 1 teaspoon of the stuff (5g) 3 times a day. So a pack lasts 13 days. I don't know how much vegetables cost, but I'm sure you can get more than two weeks worth for £8.

All-bran is much cheaper, I think...

Xylitol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol

Good stuff

Things of the Fibrosure and Benelax (sounds like that loose-knit confederation of states bordering Germany)have been around for a long time and were initially aimed at a different sector of society...

...working as I do in elderly care, I can happily testify that for years now we have been buying in this stuff as a means of getting dietary fibre into very old people with digestive problems at one end and "continence issues" at the other. It goes under various product names, but I'm willing to bet that this is EXACTLY the same stuff repackaged to sound sexier for a younger, more affluent, user group who are willing to pay ten times more for the stuff than we do, and who might be somewhat put off to know about its primary use in healthcare...

For us, it comes in single-serving foil sachets with a limited variety of "flavourings", nasty institutional synthetic strawberry, banana or chocolate. Having sipped at one out of curiosity, I can reveal the taste of the strawberry flavour is almost exactly that of the Pripsen preparation used to treat intestinal worm infestations (one of many occupational hazards in this job - of dealing with initial admissions to care, who might, we can delicately say, have been neglecting themselves for an indefinite period and have a whole host of communicable infections that need treating. It's a rare worker in this sector who DOESN'T pick up the odd bug or parasite or ailment)