Beam Me Up Scotty / Advertising

• While it's certainly the message he wanted to convey, Yul Brynner did not say the exact phrase "I'm dead. Don't smoke," in his posthumous anti-smoking ad.
• Meta-example: an ad for a cable company shows a movie-loving family communicating entirely in movie quotes. They must be phonies or trying to avoid copyright issues, though, because most of the quotes are Beam Me Up Scotties.
• It's a crude example, but the commercial never said, "I'm Mr. Bucket. Put your balls in my mouth." It did come very close a few times, though. What it actually says in this commercial is 'Put your balls in my top, I'm Mr Bucket, out of my mouth they will pop'.^note And it wouldn't make sense anyway, since the toy worked by placing the plastic balls into the head, not the mouth.
• Mikey, the kid from the Life cereal commercials in the 1970s and '80s, will not "eat anything" despite the phrase being remembered as "Let's give it to Mikey, he'll eat anything!" In the commercial, the two boys opt to give their Life cereal (which must taste awful, seeing as their parents say it's "good for them") to their little brother Mikey. One of the brothers disagrees, saying, "He won't eat it. He hates everything." But, surprise: "He likes it! Hey, Mikey!" When you think about it, giving the kid who would "eat anything" their cereal would prove nothing about whether the cereal tastes good.
• Averted in a 2008 commercial for the jewelry store Jared. A man's car navigation system starts acting like HAL, but gets the famous quote right.
  "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
• The famous 1987 anti-drug PSA never actually said, "This is your brain... this is your brain on drugs." There were two versions, long and short. The long version started with the camera on John Roselius saying "Is there anyone out there who still isn't clear about what doing drugs does? OK, last time." Picks up an egg, "this is your brain", points to the skillet, "this is drugs," cracks egg and holds up skillet, "this is your brain on drugs. Any questions?" The short version was a hot skillet sizzling with oil, waiting on the stove accompanied by psychedelic sound effect — while a voiceover said, "OK, last time. This is drugs," indicating the skillet, not the egg. Then an egg broke open into the skillet and immediately began frying. Cue the voiceover, "This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?"^note An even shorter version skipped the "OK, last time" part.
• There have been many spoofs of Ed McMahon telling people that they've won the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes. Ed actually advertised for short-lived rival American Family Publishers.
• The famous Digital Piracy Is Evil PSA does not state "You Wouldn't Download a Car". It instead tells the viewer that "You Wouldn't Steal a Car", probably because people absolutely would download a car.
• Many people think of McDonald's signs that boast X billion hamburgers sold. While some of the oldest signs did say that, the signs installed after about 1970 actually read "Over X Billion Served". Not only does this allow them to include complimentary burgers, "served" just sounds friendlier than "sold". By the mid-80s, new signs switched to the generic "Billions and Billions", then did away with the count at some point in the '90s.
• Brooke Shields never said, "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins." She actually said, "Do you want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing."
• Frank Gari-penned jingle "Turn to 3", written for Cleveland’s TV station WKYC, is often misquoted as "Turn to a friend, turn to 3," but the jingle’s closing lyrics are actually "You’ve got a friend, turn to 3." WKYC’s slogan prior to "Turn to 3" was "At Channel 3, You’ve Got a Friend," also by Gari.
• British Airways' slogan used by the airline between 1974 and 1983 was "We'll take more care of you," not "We'll take good care of you." The airline that used the "good care" line was actually BOAC, one of BA's predecessors, which used "BOAC takes good care of you" from at least the early 1950s until it was merged into BA in 1974.
• Silentnight Beds: A quote page from Headington, a website dedicated to UK adverts, has Duck from the "My First Bed" advert say "Eat up your dinner if you want to go to bed early," when she actually said, "Eat up now or you can't go to bed early". Also, she's incorrectly referred to as a hippo mother, and her three children are referred to as all hippos when only two are hippos and one is a duck.
• An internet meme shows Proto from the Protegent ads (specifically the 3D one) with the caption "Yes". Not only does Proto not say "yes" during that frame, the word isn't used once during the commercial the meme is from.
• This somewhat infamous British advert features a young boy who stubbornly refuses to poo in his own bathroom as his friend Paul has Glade Touch and Fresh air freshener. Discussion of the advert often includes the quote "I want to do a poo at Paul's (house)" despite this exact phrase not being used once in the advert; what the kid actually says is "But I want to do a poo in Paul's bathroom" and "I'm going to do a poo at Paul's".
• The infamous adverts for British price comparision website Go Compare featuring flamboyant opera singer Gio Compario have spawned a few minor examples;
  • The original advert set in a coffee shop does not feature the lyric "With just a few clicks and your spondoolicks".^note "Spondoolicks" being a slang term for money, for those unaware. Gio actually sings "With just a few clicks, save your spondoolicks".
  • The same advert ends with one of the customers asking "How much do you reckon they're paying [Gio]?" to which his friend responds "He's only a tenor".^note A pun on "tenner", British slang for a £10 note. The former line is sometimes misquoted as "How much do you think he costs?"
• The opening lyrics to the famous "Oscar Mayer wiener" jingle are not "Oh, I wish I was an Oscar Mayer wiener" in the original 1965 commercial. It's "Oh, I'd love to be an Oscar Mayer wiener." That said, later commercials from the '90s and 2000s have used "Oh, I wish I was..."
• In the famous 1972 Alka-Seltzer commercial, contrary to most people's memories and Ramona Quimby: Age 8, Ralph doesn't say "I can't believe I ate the whole thing!" He says "I can't believe I ate that whole thing!" Although he does say "The whole thing!" at the end of the commercial, referring to the cup of Alka-Seltzer he drank. The Ramona book also says that the "thing" he ate was a pizza, when the actual commercial doesn't mention what kind of food it was.

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