But wait!

by Kris

The DVR, in my opinion, is one of the greatest inventions. I’m not a such a techno-lover that I glom onto any new technology automatically as a great idea — it really has to work for me. And the DVR does. Given the hours I work, I often can’t watch TV shows when they’re on. I’m also an occasional insomniac, sometimes going weeks when I don’t sleep much, followed by periods when I sleep well for a time.

A well-stocked DVR allows me to enjoy my sleepless hours by having personal mini-marathons of Castle, Elementary, NCIS, and others of my favorite shows that I’ve been neglecting. And nobody catching up on TV by watching in the middle of the night should be forced to watch commercials, which DVRs allow us to skip.

Unless they want to watch them, that is. And strangely, sometimes I do.

Getting back to clever inventions…I actually enjoy some of those commercials for the products mostly sold on TV. You know the ones, those for Pajama Jeans or Bacon Bowls and other such products. The ones discount stores also seem to sell in displays labeled, “Products Sold on TV” or “As Seen on TV.”

I always admire the ingenuity their inventors bring to those products. So much so, I always want to ask them the question authors also get, but can rarely answer: “Where do you get your ideas?”

I’ve even bought a couple of those products myself. Once, when I tried to eliminate fabric softener from our lives, which I regard as a chemical I’d like us to do without, someone told me there were a pair of dimpled balls you can buy in one of those “TV Products” sections, which worked as well as fabric softener, without the toxicity.

Turns out they didn’t work as well for me. The way they function is to beat up the fabric of your laundry items, knocking all the stiffness out of them so they feel softer. Unfortunately, in the process, they also knock a lot of newness out of them. Now I’m back to using fabric softener, toxicity and all.

I also learned later that any ball will work as well as the specially designed balls, even tennis balls. Though I’m not a tennis player, I have a bag of them, which was given to me by a friend for a dog we used to have before she went on to doggie heaven. At the time, we had a wolf-dog who thought fetch was the best game ever. But she preferred to fetch objects of her own choosing, which she usually found in the yard, so we didn’t use many of the balls. Now I have a dog who, when I throw one of those balls or anything else, gives me a look as if to say, “If you throw it, you have to pick it up.” We still aren’t using many of those tennis balls, so I could have beaten up loads of laundry with them without paying a penny.

I also bought a gadget that you stick on the end of a vacuum hose to better clean out the lint filter from your dryer. Now that one I have to give high marks to. See what I mean by ingenuity. Millions of people try to stick their fingers and other objects down into the dryer lint filter, but only one thought of adapting the vacuum hose that everyone has to do the job. I have a couple of issues even with that, and I don’t use it often — I mean, who has so much time that they clean out a lint filter regularly — but every time I do, I thank its inventor.

Those commercials also make me laugh. Their sales approach is so outrageously over the top. They  always say, “But wait! There’s more!” to better their offer, offering us two or more items for the same price as one. Is there anyone who doesn’t know that means the first item was priced at double what it should be?

Those commercials must work, though, or they wouldn’t spend millions in advertising dollars continually replaying them. Now, why can’t we sell books like that?

As for me, no matter how much I admire the ingenuity brought to those products or laugh at the over-the-top commercials, few of them would actually benefit me. I once considered buying a skillet that they demonstrated as indestructible by having trucks drive over them. Since we seem particularly hard on skillets, I considered it. But given that we don’t wreck our pots by driving over them, but by cooking with them, I really didn’t know how much longer those pots would last for us than what we have. As for some of the other products, if I sank to wearing the same clothes for my sleep and wakeful hours, that level of casualness would represent a new low even for me. And I’m pretty casual. It’s changing our night gear for daytime wear that separates us from the animals.

So, I watch ‘em, I just don’t buy what they’re selling.

How about you? Which are your favorite and your least favorite type of commercials?

Comments

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Oh, dear. I bought the thing that lets you make hardboiled eggs without the shells.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time..but now I realize..WHY would you even want to do that?

But I am endlessly fascinated by the reality that if you tell someone they want something--over and over--eventually they will begin to believe it's true. Weird.

Oh, dear. You're supposed to wear DIFFERENT clothes?

[Mary]

The craziest thing I bought wasn't on a commercial. It looked like the end of a banana with a clip kinda thing on it. Theoretically, you'd use it to keep half a banana fresh. I HEAR YOU GROANING. Yes, I was that stupid. My husband will never let me forget. :)

I'm with you on the DVR, Kris. Elementary is the only show on network TV I watch, so fortunately very few hyper-sell commercials. A good thing since I'm such a sucker for useless plastic gizmos. :)

[krisneri]

Hank, I have noticed a lot of those products do seem to be geared to different ways to cook eggs. People must be unhappy with their eggs.

[krisneri]

Mary, they really can make anything seem like a reasonable product, even a banana clip. I hope you found another use for it.

[KarenM]

Kris,
I bought those blue balls for my dryer too, but I still use a fabric softener sheet.
And my cocker spaniel was not fond of fetch either. After one or two throws she would look up at me and say - I'm done, YOU go get it.
But my friends cocker was addicted to fetch and would never stop. You had to hide the ball from her.
Different strokes, as they say.

[krisneri]

Karen, I'm glad I wasn't the only one who tried those blue balls to replace dryer sheets. Believe me, you dodged a bullet with your dog. Having had a fetcher, although not a cocker-fetcher, I have to confirm what your friends reported. Dogs who love fetch are so addicted, they don't want it to ever stop. We used to have to hide anything she could play fetch with when we were too tired to play.