WISH I HADN'T SEEN THAT

Have you noticed how many advertisements today make you blush, especially in mixed company?  Most advertisements are meant to sell something, but I've seen one (too many times) that didn't tell you what they were selling does - called AndroGel.  You see a crane lift big letters around but not why.  What makes it more odd was that they told you the strength of the product and the cost per month.  I decided it was some sort of pomade to grow hair on the head.  Finally, however, they got a competitor advertisement, and it turns out that the product is to enhance testosterone by rubbing a gel in your arm pits.  Fortunately, they do not show a demonstration of applying the AndroGel,* but I didn't need to see this commercial, especially 100 times.  Is enhancing testosterone levels a good thing?**

Of course an old advertisement showed Sen. Bob Dole shilling a product for Erectile Disfunction (ED).  Of course we are all familiar with advertisements for Cialis.  I guess we are lucky that we don't see the product of taking this drug but for some reason we a shown a man and a woman in separate bath tubs.  Just what does this mean?  Don't answer, just get the advertisement off the air (or cable as the case may be).

And women are not spared.  In fact they have been bombarded with embarrassing ads longer than men.  A recent one is for Vagasil wipes.  I'll leave the use of these to your imagination.  Fortunately there are no demonstrations of its use - YET.  In one program, an ad for this product is followed by one for sanitary napkins.  We are shown women jumping all around the place to let us know how foolproof the product is.    These sorts of advertisements have probably been with us for the longest times - e.g. Kotex is almost a synonym for sanitary napkins.  At least we don't see advertisements for tampons anymore, or at least I don't. Thank heavens for that much, but I would just as soon not see any of this.

Then there are the ones for toilet paper.  Charmin shows cute bears rubbing the toilet paper against the cheek, face cheek that is, to tell you how soft it is.  But this one has a variant that comes too close to a demonstration for my tastes.  It shows a young cute bear with a red hinder that is cured though use of the brand toilet paper.  Can't we be spared anything in this day and age?

I could also do without the advertisements on colon health (Good Grief).

This article is not intended to recommend any product mentioned herein or to comment on their effectiveness.  Just spare me the advertisements.

Then there are a group of advertisements that aren't offensive but where the purpose is unclear.  GE may be the champion of these with one showing a driverless car followed by a presumably driverless locomotive.  They mention a speaking car and, more impressive, a talking locomotive though neither talks so far as I can hear.  GE does not make automobiles but does make locomotives, but how many of us buy a train engine?  Then there is another one in which a robot inspects a large jet engine, and they tell us how many bits of information are produced in a short time.  Are you in the market for either a robot or large jet engine?  The strange thing is that GE does make things that we might buy like stoves and the like.  So what is the purpose of these ads?  Just to impress the heck out of us?

* I regret to say that I have seen a competitor's advertisement (Axiron) complete with the underarm application (April 4, 2013).  Testosterone supplements are a big business estimated to be $1.6 billion in 2012 and growing.
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone:
A 2009 study of 25 male subjects found that men with artificially raised testosterone were 27% less generous while playing a test game than they were at their normal testosterone level. The authors concluded that "What we have found is that T[estosterone] appears to play a role inducing men to change from being selfless to being selfish.