August 2006
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Be very afraid
The readers of Selling It have been on the watch for warnings--silly or senseless ones, that is. Take, for starters, the caution at right. Other examples follow.




Product Warning Comment
”SpongeBob SquarePants” iron-on Do not iron while wearing shirt. Ouch!
Phone with magnet in earpiece Before each use ensure objects such as pins or staples are not stuck to earpiece. Ouch! Ouch!!
Shaver, hair dryer, curling iron Never use while sleeping. Wait—how did Sleeping Beauty get her look?
Cheese pizza Product becomes hot when cooked. And cold when frozen.
Car sunshade Vehicle should not be driven with sunshade in the window. Or with a paper bag over the driver’s head.
Wine club Do not deliver to an intoxicated person. If the person seems happy, break out a Breathalyzer.
Cutting board Opening with sharp object may damage the product. But slicing tomatoes won’t?
Hamburger press Do not operate when you are tired. Hey, squishing ground beef takes concentration.
Lamp Never use this lamp around living children. OK, we’re stumped.




You got that right
The Freudian typo appeared in a newspaper ad for an attorney referral service.


Gloating oats
At first glance, the graph from a Quaker ad seems to imply that cholesterol levels plummet when you eat oatmeal for a month. But a close look at the left side shows that the numbers range from 196 to 210, with levels falling from 209 to 199. A drop, sure, but no nosedive.


no fading?
Great: like-new pants forever. But do you see that little smudge above “no fading”? It’s the word “virtually.”


Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
It’s been a long time since we’ve had a good month’s sleep.


Heal thyself
Literature for the dietary supplement Proxenol says that its active ingredient, an enzyme in the “wonder food” morinda citrifolia, can reverse the aging process. It describes a “select group of French men and women” who, by eating this stuff, have been spared ills such as headaches and arthritis, and whose skin looks at least “25 to 35 years younger than everyone else of their same age in the entire world.” Another boast: “Their hair never turns gray … they never need glasses or hearing aids in their entire lives!” So, a Minnesota reader wondered, why does a spokesdoctor for the product, pictured below, have gray hair and glasses?


Big news, Part II
Last year we rounded up five M&M bags ranging in size from “king” (3.27 ounces) to “large” (21.30 ounces). In between came “small,” “big snack bag,” and “medium.” Just when we thought Mars couldn’t invent another size, a keen-eyed staff member spotted this bag, which weighed the same as the “king” we saw. She managed to eat the contents all by herself.