Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket: Difference between revisions

Compare [[Viewers are Morons]].

* The acting career of the main character in ''[[Hamlet 2]]'' is mostly limited to performing these roles in commercials.

* ''[[Friends]]'' played with this. Character Joey Tribbiani is a struggling actor, and once accepts a role in an infomercial in which he portrays "Kevin", a guy who has trouble with milk cartons that are "flingin'-flangin' hard to open" (he rips one open while trying, spraying milk all over the place). But with the Milk Master 2000, he has no trouble. "Now I can have milk every day!" Later, Joey laments that his fellow cast members in a play tease him about the infomercial by asking him to open milk cartons ... and making fun of him when he can't do it.

* ''[[30 Rock]]'' when Tracy advertises his Meat Machine in order to show bread is bad: a woman picks up a slice of bread and reacts as if it burnt her fingers.

* ''[[The Daily Show]]'' featured a segment on New Jersey planning to switch to self-service petrol stations by allowing its citizens to fill their own cars (up until that point having a station attendant do it for you was state-mandated). Ed Helms, in a move satirizing the interviewed labour union leader [[Insane Troll Logic|making some unfortunate statements as to why this switch was a bad thing]], attempted to fill his own petrol and ended up strangling himself with the hose.

* Parodied by ''[[You Don't Know Jack]]'' in one of its faux advertisements, which began with "Playing Solitaire on the computer is fun, right? But it's hard to remember all those rules!" The "ad" proceeded to hawk a fictional computer game titled "52-Card Pickup 2000".

* In ''[[Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars]]'', the molotov cocktail preparation minigame at gas stations suggests that Huang Lee would be a great candidate if there was ever an infomercial for people who can't efficiently pour gasoline into their gas tank.

* Made fun of in [http://www.theslackerz.com/index.php?nav=Comic&Page=111 this] ''[[Slackerz]]'' comic.

* Discussed during the [[Freelance Astronauts]]' [[Let's Play]] of ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time]]: [[Updated Rerelease|Master Quest]]''. Ferr decides he wants a portal to the world where these commercials take place so he can impress its inhabitants with the ability to use the "old-fashioned" products ''correctly'' without hurting himself.

* Parodied in one of the Troy McClure/Dr. Nick infomercials from the earlier seasons of ''[[The Simpsons]]'', which opens with Troy awkwardly squeezing an orange against his forehead for a few seconds before telling his audience that "Until now, this was the only way to get juice from an orange." Immediate cut to Homer who is, of course, in the middle of [[What an Idiot!|actually making juice this way]].

* An early episode of ''[[Squidbillies]]'' features a fake commercial for a fictional baby crib. It starts off with a woman apparently unable to cope with her ventriloquist infant screaming with his mouth closed, insisting with a lip-synch that wouldn't be out of place in a Godzilla movie, "There's '''got''' to be a better way!"

* ''[[Clone High]]'', where Gandhi and Abe advertise their [[Spork|knork]] by having Abe dress up as an old lady who complained that she could barely walk because of the difficulty of using two utensils at the same time.

* The [[Trope Namer]] comes from the commercials advertising [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huo7h53G0IM "Snuggie Wearable Blankets"], which begin by showing a woman who simply could not make a standard blanket work. As said above, originally the blankets were created for wheelchair users who quite literally couldn't use a regular blanket, at least not safely. However, when able-bodied individuals find their blankets triumphing over them, it becomes logically painful. The best part of the commercial is that the "blanket" she's too incompetent to use is actually a decorative throw - in other words, it's about ''three feet long''. No wonder she can't get warm. This was satirized in this [[Gag Dub]] video for the "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h05ZQ7WHw8Y WTF Blanket]".

** Apparently you can buy them for your ''dog''! The commercial even has a small dog in a snuggie wearing glasses and reading a newspaper. Apparently they're trying to tap that incredibly small Mr. Peabody niche of glasses-wearing anthropomorphic dogs.