History Main / StrawmanProduct

Take flaws that most people find mere annoyances, or outright make flaws up, and crank them up to DarthWiki/SoBadItsHorrible levels. While your work will only have a beautiful fresh shine with every use. Soon people will begin to wonder how they even functioned using the other, godawful products.

* "I'm a UsefulNotes/{{Mac}}." "And I'm a [[UsefulNotes/IBMPersonalComputer PC]]." The Mac is shown as Creator/JustinLong, a young, cool guy who is always calm because he's always right. The PC is Creator/JohnHodgman, a portly guy in a suit with glasses who freaks out and goes ballistic because he's always wrong. It's like the same-sex version of DefenestrateAndBerate. Many commercials have a lot of "customers" who always prefer Macs without stating sufficient reasons other than "It's better." They always claim that "any PC" will have "a bunch of viruses and headaches" and that Macs have none. In the UK, PC and Mac are played by Creator/{{David Mitchell|Actor}} and Creator/RobertWebb, respectively.

* ComicBook/JohnnyTurbo of the UsefulNotes/TurboGrafx16 and his attempts to punch out the evil corporation of Sega who sold kids the UsefulNotes/SegaCD solely to see the look of despair on their little faces when they realized they needed a UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis to use it.

** And then there was the UsefulNotes/GameGear versus the UsefulNotes/GameBoy, as seen through the eyes of a dog: "If you were colorblind and had an IQ of less than twelve, then you wouldn't care which portable you had. Of course, [[ToiletDrinkingDogGag you wouldn't care if you drank from the toilet, either]]."
** On a side note, as the [[WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd Nerd]] pointed out UsefulNotes/ThreeDOInteractiveMultiplayer ads went out of their way to say that the SNES and Genesis were just toys compared to the awesomeness of the 3DO.

* Parodied in an episode of ''Series/MrShow'', where a national chain of supermarkets runs an increasingly slanderous series of ads against their mom-and-pop competitor. Among their boasts is that at their store, unlike at ''certain other stores'', you'll always find apples, rats don't crawl all over the food, and your children will ''not'' be kidnapped by a white slavery ring.

* Creator/ScottAdams (of ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}fame) tried to reinvest some of his income from the cartoon strip into a business providing healthy eating products, and wondered why sales were indifferent when he'd put a lot of thought and research into how to present and market the product. He discovered that as the new boy on the block, the established competitors were using their clout to get the upstart relegated to less prominent positions in stores, or else the untried, unproven, new brand was deliberately being used as the "strawman product" to make the big names look like the stars on the shelf.

* Bing.com represents its competitors using [[UncannyValley humans who communicate like search engines]]. [[AnalogyBackfire This implies that their product is]] [[AIIsACrapshoot a search engine that communicates like a human.]]

Compare AbsoluteComparative, where this is avoided by declining to mention exactly what your product is better than.

* Chuck E. Cheese ran a series of commercials in 1994-1995 (plus one in 1996), comparing "boring" (ie. cartoonishly exaggerated) restaurants with Chuck E. Cheese's. The ads always ended with kids at said restaurants complaining about how they "should've said, 'Chuck E. Cheese Please.'" In one commercial, they even went out of their way to dis ''ethnic restaurants!''[[note]]The nationalities of the restaurants were never actually mentioned in the commercial, presumably for the sake of political correctness. But it's pretty obvious they were German, Chinese and Mexican[[/note]]

So call now, and get the hottest trend in [[CurseCutShort bullshi...]] we mean ''marketing'', today, for just [[FourEqualPaymentsOf three easy payments of 29.99!]]

* The Canadian webseries "WebOriginal/TetesAClaques" has a commercial for the Willy-Waller 2006, a small utensil that makes peeling potatoes much easier (it should, as it's... a potato peeler). How do they demonstrate its superiority? [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TagRPfAfcrI&t=57 By showing one guy peeling with the Willy-Waller 2006 side-by-side with... a guy using his fingernails.]] Sold in sets of 14 for $120.

* In Australia at least, Energizer advertises its batteries as lasting three times as long as Duracell's; Duracell advertises ''its'' batteries as lasting three times as long as Energizer's. While one would think this would require either BlatantLies or infinite-capacity batteries and the destruction of the Universe, it turns out they're both [[FromACertainPointOfView comparing their own long-life batteries to the competition's high-power-but-short-life batteries]].

*** Subway also likes to poke fun at the traditional "assembly line" strategy that most fast-food restaurants use, with the idea that "special orders" are not allowed. This is despite the fact that most fast-food restaurants do special orders and some do not even make the food until the transaction is complete.

** And then there was the UsefulNotes/GameGear versus the UsefulNotes/GameBoy, as seen through the eyes of a dog: "If you were colorblind and had an IQ of less than twelve, then you wouldn't care which portable you had. Of course, you wouldn't care if you drank from the toilet, either."

* Commercials for side dishes like Stove Top Stuffing and Rice-a-Roni tend to portray potatoes this way, suggesting that potatoes are dull and boring (and that they're the most common side dish. (There was even a commercial for Rice-a-Roni where animated spuds promoted the product to stop "the senseless slaughter of innocent potatoes".)

* In 1994, there was a really weird commercial for Duncan Yo-Yo's, depicting a brain dead gamer sitting alone on a chair and playing a Sega Genesis (with [[PacManFever Atari 2600 sound effects]]), while a [[TotallyRadical cool kid with a backwards baseball cap]] is playing with a Duncan Yo-Yo. Ummmm, what exactly do video games and yo-yo's have in common, aside from being toys?

* Dollar Shave Club has several commercials that portray store employees as ranging from indifferent to downright abusive with customers trying to buy razors, doing things that would likely get them fired or even ''arrested'' for assault. "It's almost as if they don't want you to buy razors." Seriously?

* Advertising law in the UK used to outlaw this style of ad, but deregulation during the 2000s saw it permitted.

* "I'm a UsefulNotes/{{Mac}}." "And I'm a [[UsefulNotes/IBMPersonalComputer PC]]." The Mac is shown as Creator/JustinLong, a young, cool guy who is always calm because he's always right. The PC is John Hodgman, a portly guy in a suit with glasses who freaks out and goes ballistic because he's always wrong. It's like the same-sex version of DefenestrateAndBerate. Many commercials have a lot of "customers" who always prefer Macs without stating sufficient reasons other than "It's better." They always claim that "any PC" will have "a bunch of viruses and headaches" and that Macs have none. In the UK, PC and Mac are played by Creator/{{David Mitchell|Actor}} and Creator/RobertWebb, respectively.

* Dollar Shave Club has several commercials that portray store employees as ranging from indifferent to downright abusive with customers trying to buy razors. "It's almost as if they don't want you to buy razors." Seriously?

** On a side note, as the [[WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd Nerd]] pointed out ThreeDO ads went out of their way to say that the SNES and Genesis were just toys compared to the awesomeness of the 3DO.