Friday, May 14, 2010

and that's not all


It's amazing how one informercial - portraying our dubious domestic product above, the mighty Slice 'n Dice - can dedicate a full 35 minutes - oh I timed it - to proving that it chops up your various root tubers better than a butcher knife.

We have here a Slice 'n Dice, marketeered to American standards of punctuation, as understood by the masses. If if was called a Slice & Dice, sales would drop, because Slice 'n Dice is something any retard can quite happily digest, and will.

Thirty five minutes of advertising the wonders of the S 'n D. By an American chef who was throwing but every vegetables known to man under the test of the crazy rotating blades. With another 5 dedicated to the 'And that's not all! Free cheese grater that'll grate even plastic!'

Because you might want to decorate your Sunday salads with a fine sprinkle of Tupperware filings.

Basically, even though a product can grate plastic, split atoms and pay your mortgage while chopping up onions, you won't EVER use it.

What you'll do is buy it because it can do that stuff, irrelevant of the fact that this novelty will last all of 5.3 seconds and you may use it once a year to grate ginger.

And one day you'll open your cutlery drawer and ask yourself, 'what in fuck's name was I thinking paying R199.99 for a thing that grates plastic.'

The other great thing about informercials, is not it's powerful ability to entice you into buying a bunch of crap, but it's ability to hypnotise you with the same slogans over and over again.

'And that's not all...!' is so overused, your hippocampus immediately shuts down and your conscious brain functions cease to exist.

It's fantastic. It gives you the same stimilus you'd get from watching a particularly Ronn Moss-saturated episode of Bold.

Like last night, they will throw in something just to awe you the fuck out even more. By now you're so numbed, you're probably drooling over the upholstery and you're even idly thinking to yourself, 'I think I'm gonna buy this thing.'

(Which is the exact algorithm in which I found myself with a Floor-Wizz. That I use once every seven years.)

However there really ARE so many times you can use the following phrases:

'You won't believe how the [Stairmaster/Twista/Banana Hanger] will change your life.'

'...And that's not all! We'll throw in ANOTHER one absolutely free.'

'Call now and you'll get the Bauer pot lids absolutely free.' (Sidenote: Shouldn't lids come with pots as a mandatory configurement? Shouldn't it be an all-in-one transaction?)

'Have the thighs/stomach/upper arms you've been dreaming about without having to do ANY exercise whatsoever! In fact you can sit on your couch and watch TV just like you're doing right now while the Thigh-Buster 4000 sends pulses of electric current through your lipodic tissue!'

Last night, the American chef, feverishly throwing consumable and non-consumable shit to be chopped up by the Slice 'n Dice, threw in a whole onion.

And detracted his rhetoric from his fabulous over-usage of the informercial cliche.

He said:
Watch how this whole onion is diced in seconds!....And...voila! There won't be any tears!

[pause]. I really believe he was improvising sans script now, secretly hoping to be get his big break on General Hospital, when he said:

The only tears you'll be crying will be tears of joy......Joy that you bought the MagiMix Slice 'n Dice.

Fuck. I should've recorded it.

4 comments:

Mich said...

hahahah gosh I hate that commercial.

Jeepers I haven't been here in a while. *waves frantically at Peas* awesomeness has been happening I see. Good stuff. <3 xoxo

Peas on Toast said...

Hey Elle!

Nice to see you around the old place my dear, how have you been?

* Waves frantically back *

PS: I hate this informercial so much that I love it. It's done a 360.

Nick said...

are you still blogging?

Nandoism™ said...

That Slice n' Dice is is almost as bad as me ordering all those shampoos that promise me lustrous hair, like that of an Alaskan moose. Oh, TV, what would this gay boy do without his?