Dramatization. Orbit gum will not get you into heaven.

September 26, 2006 10:47 AM

Mouseprint.org -- "There's small print, there's fine print, and then there's mouseprint." Online trades as low as $9.95.*

* - with account balances of $1 million or more.
posted by ericb (28 comments total)

Hey, this is good*.

*(memetic brackets "[]" only available on this model with $1,955 downpayment)
posted by NinjaTadpole at 10:59 AM on September 26, 2006

I've sometimes wondered if any television ad mouseprint has been put to any sort of legal test. Even on high-def TVs its humanly impossible to read an entire paragraph of tiny print in just 4 seconds which is the same as having no disclaimer at all.
posted by StarForce5 at 11:03 AM on September 26, 2006

In Canada (if not other places as well) Red Bull TV ads actually have a disclaimer to the effect that Red Bull will not actually cause you to grow wings and fly. I hope it's a marketing thing and not the result of a complaint by a hopelessly moronic customer who was actually expecting to grow dorsal appendages. Then again these days you never know.
posted by clevershark at 11:52 AM on September 26, 2006

Great link.
posted by erebora at 11:59 AM on September 26, 2006

In Canada (if not other places as well) Red Bull TV ads actually have a disclaimer to the effect that Red Bull will not actually cause you to grow wings and fly. I hope it's a marketing thing and not the result of a complaint by a hopelessly moronic customer who was actually expecting to grow dorsal appendages. Then again these days you never know.

I think it's a little mixture of the two, but sometimes I really wonder. I've seen some kind of TV ad where a kid ducktapes another kid to a huge cartoonish rocket, then lights a fuse. At the bottom it says "Do not attempt". The mind boggles.
posted by bob sarabia at 12:04 PM on September 26, 2006

Good link.
posted by Ynoxas at 12:09 PM on September 26, 2006

In the boston.com article, why are the words "number," "one" and "zealot" in bold throughout the entire article? Or am I going Russell-Crowe-as-John-Nash crazy?
posted by Doofus Magoo at 12:19 PM on September 26, 2006

Another one: Twinings just redesigned their packaging, and now the boxes of individually wrapped tea bags include only 20 rather than 25. Funny how I didn't see the price per box drop at all...
posted by twsf at 12:31 PM on September 26, 2006

I love disclaimers, esp. ones in cars ads that state "Professional driver on a closed course, do not attempt." And then has footage of city streets and an auto being operated in a safe and controlled manner. Okay.

Then again at my place of business we prepare risk disclosure statements and ALWAYS include disclaimers stating gloves and eye protection should be used when handling hand soap of dish detergent.
posted by Keith Talent at 12:36 PM on September 26, 2006

Man, some of those are really sneaky. The mayo jars and Tide boxes would have fooled me for sure... though I suppose the Tide change is reasonable, if you really can get the same number of loads from the new formula.

My favorite disclaimer is the one from kids' commercials: "Action figures cannot walk or talk."
posted by vorfeed at 12:39 PM on September 26, 2006

bob sarabia - "...a kid ducktapes another kid to a huge cartoonish rocket.... At the bottom it says "Do not attempt"."

Where the heck would a kid find a rocket to attempt this anyway?
posted by porpoise at 12:39 PM on September 26, 2006

One of my favorites was a soft drink in Nova Scotia called Iron Brew (there was also a UK version called I'rn Bru), and it had a small disclaimer saying *not a source of iron, presumably for all the mothers who were naively feeding it to their babys.
posted by phirleh at 12:46 PM on September 26, 2006

Consumer Reports has documented these shenanigans for years -- decades, even -- in their "Selling It" section. For some reason candybars have received attention when they do this, but it's everyone. Coffee can a little light this time? Tissue "air-puffed"? Very few consumers actually keep track of what they paid for the item last time. It's much simpler to redesign packaging than to obviously raise the price.

And car ads? Really, hold onto your wallet. Not so much the corporate campaigns, but the local dealerships. You simply have to start with the assumption you're seeing some kind of bait-and-switch.

Doofus: It's a mirror of a boston.com article, and I presume the bolding came from their saving the HTML of the Google cache after using "number one zealot" as the search term.
posted by dhartung at 12:57 PM on September 26, 2006

vorfeed: My grandfather was a chemist and a cleaner and performed extensive tests on the performance of laundry detergents. His conclusion was that using half the recomended amount worked just as well, or even better since it left less residue.
posted by StickyCarpet at 1:42 PM on September 26, 2006

This reminds me of one of my favorite Simpsons bits:

Krusty: [on television] All right, here's the deal. Every time you watch my show, I will send you... [holds up a check] ...forty dollars!

Voiceover: [speaking quickly] Checks will not be honored.
posted by brain_drain at 1:51 PM on September 26, 2006

Where the heck would a kid find a rocket to attempt this anyway?

I don't know about other kids, but we just built them and went down to the local Toys R Us or a small hobby shop and bought the biggest Estes rocket engines we could.

Which were never big enough to actually launch any of us kids, but damned if we didn't try. They sure could send a Lego rocket car a fair ways, though.
posted by loquacious at 1:53 PM on September 26, 2006

Also, from StarForce5: I've sometimes wondered if any television ad mouseprint has been put to any sort of legal test. Even on high-def TVs its humanly impossible to read an entire paragraph of tiny print in just 4 seconds which is the same as having no disclaimer at all.

I can usually read and retain all of most such "mouseprint" disclaimers on a regular NTSC screen - but I'm a sideshow freak when it comes to reading, and can "read" or "see" entire sentences and even not-so-complex paragraphs in one shot - in a manner probably not unlike how people "see" photos or graphical symbols. This is based partially on speed reading skills developed via early computer programs when I was young, as well as a purely natural and voracious appetite for the English language itself.

But I'm a weirdo, and this is probably very far from the norm. I'm just saying that it's not "humanly impossible". Unless you're trying to imply that I'm not human, in which case I'd have no choice but to show my true Reptilian form and eat you and your younglings. Sorry, it's just how things are done. Nothing personal.
posted by loquacious at 2:02 PM on September 26, 2006

WEARING OF THIS GARMENT DOES NOT ENABLE YOU TO FLY.
posted by McSly at 2:14 PM on September 26, 2006

Hey Loquacious, what programs were those? They still around?
posted by Brainy at 3:20 PM on September 26, 2006

there was also a UK version called I'rn Bru.No. The Scottish version is the original, and has no apostrophe in it....had a small disclaimer saying *not a source of ironThe original is, however, and was sold as being made from girders. Ferric ammonium citrate may not be actual girders, but it's pretty close. Your Canadian version is inferior.
posted by imperium at 3:40 PM on September 26, 2006

Even though I don't really like jackass the concept, I always liked the disclaimer (or at least the skull and cross-crutches):


And I really like the one with the new movie: "The stunts in this movie were performed by professionals, so neither you nor your dumb buddies should try anything from this movie. "

I see why you should have to warn idiots, but I don't see why you have to be kind about it. You're already saving them from horrible injuries, why should you have to sugar coat it too?
posted by illovich at 4:06 PM on September 26, 2006

Brainy: I don't remember what they were called - this was back in Apple 2 days in the mid 80s. It might have been simply called "Speed Reader" or a variation of that title.

However, the program entailed of a series of paged texts that you read and then answered questions about in a quiz format to test retention, and combined those results with time spent per article or segment. As you progressed through the program it would prompt for faster reading times by displaying the article/segment for decreasing amount of time, as well as offering instructions on how to read faster. I believe it may have done some highlighting wizardry as well to help one focus on larger and larger blocks of text.

There's probably similar and more programs available today.
posted by loquacious at 4:10 PM on September 26, 2006

Probably similar and more modern programs available, today.

Disclaimer: Speed reading does fuck all for your editing/writing skills.
posted by loquacious at 4:11 PM on September 26, 2006

People do believe the darndest things; see Leonard v. Pepsico. (More human-readable details available from Snopes.)
posted by louie at 7:43 PM on September 26, 2006

vorfeed and StickyCarpet: the great Cecil Adams himself claims that detergent does not achieve results appreciably better than those achieved using tap water.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 9:24 PM on September 26, 2006

Great post, thanks. I love the explanation of the puffery defense of claims like "the toughest glue on planet earth":

[Gorilla Glue argued] The “toughest glue” claim was mere puffery and “is so broad in scope, so general in nature, and so exaggerated in content, that no reasonable consumer would believe it to be a superiority claim.”

If that kind of logic were allowed to stand, then any advertiser could make specific claims about their products and defend those claims by in essence saying that a consumer would have to be an idiot to believe our advertising.
posted by mediareport at 9:58 PM on September 26, 2006

louie writes "People do believe the darndest things; see Leonard v. Pepsico."

The funniest part of that story was how this guy was able to convince suckers investors to give him $700k.

Did he then get hired by Enron?
posted by clevershark at 6:34 AM on September 27, 2006

louie writes "People do believe the darndest things; see Leonard v. Pepsico. (More human-readable details available from Snopes.)"

That decision is totally human-readable, and well worth the reading! The court had some fun with it, e.g.:

Second, the callow youth featured in the commercial is a highly improbable pilot, one who could barely be trusted with the keys to his parents' car, much less the prize aircraft of the United States Marine Corps. Rather than checking the fuel gauges on his aircraft, the teenager spends his precious preflight minutes preening. The youth's concern for his coiffure appears to extend to his flying without a helmet. Finally, the teenager's comment that flying a Harrier Jet to school "sure beats the bus" evinces an improbably insouciant attitude toward the relative difficulty and danger of piloting a fighter plane in a residential area, as opposed to taking public transportation.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:51 PM on September 27, 2006