random ads

It Get’s Better!

…unless you are talking about grammar, then your Boxing Day email flyer may suffer a little under the load. I remember working Boxing Day in retail1It is the abyssal hell you imagine, so I’ll cut the proprietor here some slack and not call them out by name.

I remember way back (we’re talking about the 1990s here at the latest) when Boxing Day sales were items featured on local news, mainly because people would line up at A&B Sound at some absurdly early hour to get great deals on stereo and related AV equipment. Remember when people would line up for the new iPhone? It was like that, except it happened every year, for decades.

Now it’s mostly just a ton of e-flyers in my inbox and people placing orders online. And Boxing Day starts on Christmas Day…or earlier.

And I’m okay with that, really. I do not want to stand in a line.

(Also, I would be remiss to not point out the somewhat odd choice of using “It Gets Better!” as a shopping slogan, since it is best known for the It Gets Better Project to help out LGBTQ+ youth.)

A New Business Attitude!

It is time again for me to randomly go through old issues of The Computer Paper on The Internet Archive and delight in the old-timey world of tech print ads.

Behold, an ad from the November 1999 issue for a Samsung multi-function printer:

Business woman has her arms crossed and means business. Also, is she leaning on something we can’t see or just have good balance? My favourite part may be the single word New! callout, as if it’s a feature. I can’t mock too much, though, because my current Brother multi-function printer can still fax, too.

Fun facts (fax?):

  • The samsungcanada.com URL is actually available. It doesn’t even redirect! (The current URL is samsung.com/ca.) With the way companies scarf up addresses, this kind of surprises me.
  • The Samsung logo was changed slightly in 2005, with the changes easiest to see in the ‘M’. It looks like they ditched the oval, possibly at the same time: https://www.samsung.com/ca/about-us/brand-identity/logo/
  • As near as I can tell, Samsung no longer makes printers of any sort. They do offer a smart fridge, though.

Bonus:

In the same issue is this ad for Stupid Computers. It is amazing. stupidcomputers.com does not have a website, but according to dan.com (“a GoDaddy brand”) it has been sold.

Also, uh, what kind of gun is space chick holding there?

Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?

Bonus points if you get the reference in the title (which also means you are old. See the end of this post for a link to the source).

I got an email from Kobo, which sells eBooks and eReaders (I’m using the spelling they use, which the LanguageTool extension in Firefox is insisting is horrible and wrong):

So, this is riffing on the famous line Tom Hanks utters in Forrest Gump:

Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.

Forrest Gump, Esquire

Except it completely reverses the line because that’s cute? Funny? Just kinda dumb?

Just kinda dumb.

I’m actually trying to be more positive these days, but I am compelled to point out this kind of lazy nonsense when it is expressly sent to my inbox on a Monday morning. Don’t do this to me, Kobo!

Also, here’s a link revealing the source of the title, from an SNL episode in 1992. How is it possible 1992 was 31 years ago? I was 27, which feels like being a newborn now.

Dramatic journey to the ophthalmologist! Available at Amazon!

UPDATE: I thought I had saved a local copy of the image but apparently not, and it’s now been updated (presumably by Book Bub) to something completely different, thereby ruining this sarcastic post forever.

UPDATE #2: The image keeps changing, so I appear to have turned this post into a micro-portal for Book Bub ads. I should probably fix this, but at the same time it amuses me. If the original ad reappears, I’ll grab a local copy of it, but it has seemingly vanished.

That’s the best I can gather based on this BookBub ad I’ve seen a few times. That is one nasty eye-swirly issue happening there.

I otherwise have no idea what the story is about, other than it’s a series, so maybe there are multiple ophthalmologist visits. Also, typing the word “ophthalmologist” is hard.

Promotions gone horribly not-quite-right

Two I’ve seen lately.

First up, Microsoft wants you to get a Surface Laptop 3…maybe never? As of this post, trying to order some Surface devices from the Microsoft Store site still gives Invalid Date for when you might receive them. This seems to be related to new Surface devices, so maybe the store is just reflecting the general glitch level of the new Surface devices.

Next is this promotion to get a flu shot. Every time I look at this it reads to me as FU season is here! Which, if you end up getting the flu, is perhaps not an inaccurate way to describe it.

Not a sex ad

Admit it, you see the same thing I do when you look at this EVGA ad:

(Hadrons are subatomic particles)
(I’m not going to define the other word you and I may have seen at first glance)

What does my blog needs? “Ads!”

I asked one of my online friends (they are the best because they can never give me an actual wedgie) what else I could put on my blog, to which he responded “Ads!”

So I went searching for some good ads and found this one from the 1950s or as we call it now, The Age of Enlightenment:

Crazy girl likes jam

I call this “Crazy girl likes jam”. My friend suggested she is thinking about chomping on the fingers and relishing the thought. I think he may be right.

Speaking of The Age of Enlightenment:

Colorful cancer

Lord a-mercy, am I right?

The real question here is how she is keeping that cigarette in her mouth.

Feeling thirsty after your cigarette and jam sandwich? How about some orange juice?

Orange juice creepy

Crazy kids love orange juice. Gives ’em energy for doing all sorts of things. Like MURDER THE FAMILY IN THEIR SLEEP.

Apologies to the sites I appropriated the images from. I just used Google and did a search. You can find the originals easily enough, especially if you read to the next three lines where I link them:

Jam girl from slashfoods.com
Happy smoker of color from Vintage Ad Browser
Crazy orange juice kid from Photoree

And to prove that questionable ads are timeless, here’s an Ars Technica story on AT&T using the September 11th terrorist attacks for a smartphone ad. The AT&T CEO issued an apology which basically amounted to, “Boy, that was pretty dumb, huh?”