Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' gives you [http://www.hulu.com/watch/34460/saturday-night-live-jar-glove#s-p10-sr-i3 the Jar Glove].

* Parodied and subverted in one episode of ''[[The Honeymooners]]'': Ralph and Ed are trying to sell a multi-function kitchen utensil on an infomercial. They only have two apples, so they don't practice coring them. When they're doing the actual commercial, Ed, in full [[Cloudcuckoolander]] mode, doesn't bother faking having trouble with the normal corer, and finishes in less than five seconds. Meanwhile, Ralph spends several minutes trying to get the product to work, growing increasingly frazzled.

** An episode features Janeane Garofalo as a woman who simply can't organize the bags in her kitchen, shouting, "Help me!" at the camera. The solution is "bag hutch," a box to put bags in. The writers had to change the name of the product because "bag box" was already the name of a product that did the exact same thing.

* ''[[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.

 

* 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.

* Practically every food processor TV spot begins by showing us someone who shouldn't be allowed near a knife trying to use one.

* "Are you still cleaning the old-fashioned way?" commercials ask, showing us the most haggard housewife in history struggling vainly and ineptly at a splotch on the wall.

* There have been numerous ads for new ways to peel potatoes that begin showing someone nearly slit their wrists while they hurl inch-thick slices of potato around the room.

** The sad thing is, the Pasta Pro actually seems like a clever idea (one less thing in the kitchen to clean), but the execution fails spectacularly (Wow, it fits gas AND electric stoves? [[Sarcasm Mode|Amazing!]]). Not only that, according to customer reviews, there are numerous design flaws with it: The locking mechanism sometimes fails, steam can cause the lid to expand and become permanently stuck to the pot, and the red paint can flake off and ''contaminate the food.''

* The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR1YD1uq3Eo Ove-Glove] ads begin with a woman who drops something supposedly because she's using one of those old-fashioned oven mitts, but anyone who's ever used an oven will recognize that she "dropped" the thing because she only used one hand. The commercial is trying to imply that she could have held the item securely with one hand if she'd only been wearing the Ove-Glove, but two normal mitts cost less than a single Ove-Glove. Meanwhile, the fakery extends in the other direction as a woman effortlessly moves hot cookies using her new Ove-Glove, and then one of her children picks up one of these supposedly hot cookies bare-handed and takes a bite! The Ove-Glove is apparently so amazing it also protects your immediate family.

** One Ove-Glove ad has someone attempting to remove a bowl of hot soup from a microwave, barehanded. And by "remove", we mean "give the bowl three little tugs until it topples over the microwave's edge."

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMlpSgEWhvg An ad for an egg-separator] begins by showing the ridiculous difficulty of cracking open an egg without sending the contents everywhere, a skill most folks master by their second egg. The ad also has a woman biting down on a large piece of eggshell in her muffin, something easily picked out of any badly-cracked egg. A piece of eggshell too small to see during the mixing process will usually dissolve during baking, especially in acidic muffin batter.

* Talking about eggs, the new [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ7vWvOmNRM Eggies] egg boiling cups are designed to avoid the immense challenge presented by peeling hard-boiled eggs. Cut to a woman who's somehow removed half an inch of egg white from every egg she's peeled. The eggs look like Manuel Noriega's skin. The Kevin and Bean Show on KROQ spent several segments discussing the product and found that they were surprisingly difficult to assemble and use. And are you tired of peeling hard-boiled eggs ''all day''? Get Eggies and you can be tired of cracking open your eggs and getting the fluid into the Eggies instead.

** The really funny issue is that frankly the Eggies look harder to use than a typical egg. If you salt the water you boil the eggs in or immerse the cooked egg in cold water, the shell will usually come off in about three or four big pieces. Trying to pour liquid egg goop into the small opening looks like the more likely possibility to make a huge mess (which might explain why halfway through the ad, they start talking up the ability to ''add seasoning to your egg,'' and you start wondering why they can't lead off the commercial with the smart idea)

* Touch & Brush, in which people point toothpaste tubes at toothbrushes, squash the tubes like they're trying to make pythons choke up the rabbits they ate last week (creating horrific pastey messes in the process), then use completely ineffective methods to get the remnants out of the tube. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=049pGpLdp9Y=related Who taught these children] how toothpaste works?

* A commercial for a mosquito repellent candle shows a group of friends trying to use a ''single'' tiki-torch-style mosquito repellent, huddled around it desperate for protection! Naturally, they use dozens of the advertised brand to protect their party.

* The person in the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KBXcpJfmj4 Big City Slider] commercial trying to make normal burgers simply ''should not be allowed near a stove''. (Fun fact: that's [[Billy Mays]] with his sleeves rolled down. Apparently his superhuman abilities were dependent on whether his sleeves were rolled up or not.) Also, note how he goes on and on about how you can actually put stuff on your slider after cooking them with the BCS Machine. Y'know, as if you couldn't already do that with a slider cooked the traditional way. For extra fun, when he says "Clean-up's a breeze!" the magic hands use a paper towel to dab delicately at a BCS Machine that has clearly never been used, ever.

** And it all becomes even more [[Hilarious in Hindsight|hilarious]] now that Google is accusing Bing of stealing its links.

* There exists a certain exercise device. It's a jump rope...but without the rope. According to the commercial, more people don't jump rope because it's too hard. It acts as if jumping rope takes a lot of skill and coordination. Apparently these people were so sheltered as children that they did not jump rope on the playground at recess. Later in the ad it claims that you only need to bend your knees. Let me recap. This is a jump rope with no rope and you don't need to jump. This abomination should not exist. Ladies and gentlemen...[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va2Ydlf2cqc The Jump Snap.]

*** Well, it is for whoever makes and markets the Jump Snap. They are selling something that people are willing to buy.

** Coordination is ''part of the challenge'' of jumping rope. Not to mention, [[You Fail Logic Forever|can't you jump in place while flapping your arms for free??]]

** Isn't jumping up and down while moving your arms ''already'' an exercise called ''jumping jacks''?

*** And if ''jumping jacks'' are too complex for you, you can remove the jump part and just bend your knees up and down in a squatting fashion. This revolutionary technique is known by fitness experts as ''SQUATS.''

* A minor example: An ad for Swiffer dusters shows a person using an ordinary feather duster... by pounding it up and down on various surfaces, kicking up an unbelievable cloud of dust. Has any one in history used a feather duster in this fashion? Except to film a stupid commercial or get back at a neat freak?

* The Brazilian Polishop is infamous when it comes to this trope. We got people who can't use a toothbrush, to people who can't peel a fruit without throwing the fruit through the nearest window, to people who can't PUT A DISH OVER A COMMON TABLE.

** [http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/129125555978085010.jpg Dear lord, it's spreading.]

** Here's how these things happen according to my retail experience (I never worked for Best Buy though): Someone in marketing/sales came up with the "Let us install it for you!" thing for software to improve sales among the computer-illiterate as well as spread the Geeksquad name around the store, and the bosses thought it was a solid idea. Merchandising printed out a billion of those stickers and the bosses (themselves mostly computer-illiterate) said "Stick these on all your best-selling software." The store managers (generally computer illiterate) pass the order down. The younger kids and gamers who work at Best Buy (the real computer literate ones) would mention how it's a stupid idea to put them on console games, but the manager would reply "Whatever, someone from upper management is coming next week and they want to see stickers."

** This is actually stupid in a different way. Around the time that [[Modern Warfare]] was releases they added in the ability to install games onto the system which was extremely easy.

** There are, however, some customers who ''do'' use the service, as demonstrated by it actually continuing to be offered, although the odds are low that it's due to the incompetence featured by this trope.

*** Similarly, Best Buy's Geek Squad, or any electronic store that has a computer & electronic department, offers customers to do the most basic things like installing software, running virus checks, or just moving files from the hard drive to a flash drive for a pretty penny. Granted, there are people out there who really have no idea how computers work except the basics, but even then...

* There's a commercial for a set of kitchen containers in which you can use each container as a lid to hold more food. Of course, you have to show that you just DON'T HAVE ENOUGH ROOM in a regular flat-lid container. So they show a woman trying to put spaghetti into a normal container. She has, in complete knowledge that there is not enough room in the container, piled on about a quarter of the container's volume of spaghetti ON TOP of the completely full container, and then acts SURPRISED when it goes everywhere when she puts the flat lid on.

** As [[Darths and Droids]] pointed out, [[Grappling with Grappling Rules|the rules for grappling are brain-bustingly complex]].

*** And it was Wizard's pretty much poking fun at themselves about each edition had a rather obvious flaw in it.

*** There's a song about it by a [http://girlyman.com/lyrics/71/ Doris Muramatsu].

* A commercial for "Slushie Magic" (A product that makes "instant" slushies by shaking a cup filled with juice and a frozen plastic cube) shows the typical shot of someone turning on a blender before the lid is put on. Ya know, something people learn ''not'' to do very quickly.

* Commercials for Glade Plug-Ins seem to think that women are too stupid to unplug an air freshener or some other device in order to plug in the device they want to use. Instead, the women wave the cord around with a confused look on their faces. The second situation is even more moronic, as the woman is doing this with a room full of kids who want milkshakes and she can't figure out how to unplug the air freshener or the toaster so she can plug in the blender.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKG5zlIdM6g This] Australian commercial for a microwave cookbook shows a woman pounding at a digital microwave display in frustration.

[[Category:Advertising Tropes]]

[[Category:The War On Straw]]