I know this will come as a shock to you
– but commercials don’t always tell the truth.
Okay, maybe you aren’t shocked. Maybe you understand that having
the whitest teeth and the freshest breath may make you more
pleasant to be around
– but it won’t make the hunky guy across the hall fall madly in
love with you.
I know this will come as a shock to you – but commercials don’t always tell the truth.
Okay, maybe you aren’t shocked. Maybe you understand that having the whitest teeth and the freshest breath may make you more pleasant to be around – but it won’t make the hunky guy across the hall fall madly in love with you.
And you probably know that having a toilet bowl so sparkly it will cause you to go blind just from looking at it won’t make you the most popular person in the office. And I certainly don’t believe that if I use Herbal Essence shampoo on an airplane, all the other passengers will clap the minute I emerge from the bathroom with my freshly washed hair flowing to my shoulders.
Okay, maybe they will clap – but only because I’m finally out of the bathroom.
But kids believe commercials. If a commercial says that “Trix are for kids,” then, by golly, a child will guard his bowl of cereal from any and all animated rabbits that might sneak into the house with the express purpose of stealing breakfast cereal.
And, like most kids, Junior believes that commercials are truth. He believes that televisions don’t lie. And he believes that there really is a secret lab somewhere in the Alps where precocious pre-teen scientists are rushing to discover the next flavor of Fruit Roll-Ups.
And because he is a kid and he believes, he wants everything he sees on commercials.
Take the Hover Disc, for example. According to the ads, “It’s AMAZING! It’s INCREDIBLE!” In reality, it’s a disk-shaped hunk of Mylar that’s inflated with helium to make it float – but Junior believes that it’s AMAZING and INCREDIBLE and is desperate for one.
And he’s driving me nuts, because honestly, I have a few problems with the Hover Disc.
In the ad, there are a bunch of kids in a nice looking house, batting around a Hover Disc. Okay – that’s my first problem. In real life, a mother – that would be me – would also be in that room yelling, “How many times have I told you not to throw things in the house? Go play with that outside!”
The second issue I have is that the disk is filled with helium. I don’t know about you, but I rarely keep a helium tank under my sink to fill Hover Discs. So obviously, when the disc is filled with air, it’s not going to, well, hover. In fact it’s going to be like any other Mylar disc filled with air – it’s just going to sit on the ground waiting for someone to throw it in the house. And we all know how I’ll feel about that.
My third problem is the disc itself. Okay, maybe it’s fun to stand around the back yard batting around a Mylar disk filled with air – but for $9.99? Give me a break. The first day, that thing is going to get stuck in a tree or snagged on a fence, and I’m out 10 bucks, plus shipping.
And it isn’t just the Hover Disc that has me steamed.
No, what really gets me steamed is the idea that commercials can make my child believe anything – but I can’t. I mean, I wish I could convince Junior that there is a secret lab in the Alps stocked with precocious pre-teen scientists who have discovered that zucchini is much better for you than Fruit Roll-Ups and that all children should eat their weight in zucchini very single day – but Junior isn’t buying that.
It’s probably because I’m not on TV.
Or maybe it’s because nobody is going blind from gazing at my sparkling toilet bowls. Whatever it is, I guess I have to wait for Junior to grow up and stop believing everything he sees on TV is the truth.
Until then, I’ll be washing my hair with Herbal Essence shampoo and whitening my teeth – hey, you didn’t think I was immune to commercials, did you?
