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The Power of Cheese

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The cheese stands alone.
The meat, on the other hand, has frequent visitors.
"For millions of years, man thought the moon was made of cheese.
In 1969, we went there and discovered it was made of rock.
We haven't been back since.
Behold, the Power of Cheese."

Most companies have a habit of using extreme hyperbole to sell a product. One common way of doing this is Cereal-Induced Superpowers. There is also use of making people seem Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket. The third is to cast a few magic charms and bestow upon it the power of Cheese: that is, hyping up the perceived desirability of the product to comically absurd levels.

In the context of a commercial, Serious Business can make people in the ads come off as just being way Too Dumb to Live. They will ignore their families, forgo basic necessities, and go to extreme lengths of self-abuse, all for a hamburger, a bottle of beer, and other such things. They'll barge into a hospital and try giving a person brain surgery because a new tax office made figuring out their income tax so easy, they decided that everything must be that easy. In short, people in commercials will often act at least twice as stupid as Network executives think their audience is. Sometimes "justified" because the products really do have Magic Powers. Which is just as telling to the audience.

Well, not always. Sometimes, you can tell that they're basically spoofing the concept, by having the commercial portray such behavior being as extreme as it really is. The message here is that their product is so good, you'll want to do this crazy stuff, but we know you're too smart for that, right?

[Not to be confused with Sean Cullen's claim that the greatest things in the universe are wood, cheese, and children.]

Compare The Power of Love, The Power of Friendship, and The Power of Rock, each of which can overlap with this trope, depending on the product, and Cereal-Induced Superpowers in which the product in question causes ridiculously amazing things to happen to the consumer. Contrast What Were They Selling Again?, which is when the ad barely touches on its product at all. See also Men Buy from Mars, Women Buy from Venus to get a more gender-oriented look at stupidity in advertising. If the advertisement has to include a disclaimer about the product's potentially bad effects, as for pharmaceuticals, that's Side Effects Include.... If the product is advertised as making you sexually attractive, it's Sex for Product. Often overlaps with Obsessive Spokesperson if a mascot dedicates their entire life to a product because they think it's that amazing.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Cars 
  • Volkswagen's ad campaign for their car, the Routan, is just...baffling. Apparently, according to this mockumentary by Brooke Shields, women everywhere are having babies—sometimes with men they barely even know—just to get the new Volkswagen Routan, and any of them that say otherwise ("No I'm not! And this is my husband!") are merely in denial.
    • A Volkswagen promotion, titled "Sign And Drive" (implying that it's very easy to lease or buy one of their cars) had a guy attempting to fill out the dealer paperwork while driving the car. It didn't go well. So they were forced to change the name to "Sign THEN Drive".
  • A disturbing variation has people doing awful things to each other for the sake of the product, such as a car owner sticking pins into a voodoo doll representing the neighbor who spilled coffee in the car.
  • One ad features people describing the crazy-ass rules they've made for keeping their new car nice. One of them is a woman who has decided not to let her kids get a dog based solely on the fact that she has this car now; and this manages to not be the craziest thing someone says in this commercial.
  • Another featured every man in an entire city ripping off their clothes and dancing erotically because they just really like this one car driving by.
  • What about Joe Isuzu? His car advertisements included some truly outrageous statements, frequently accompanied by subtitled snarkiness.

    Drinks 
  • An ad campaign for Korbel champagne, where any other brand was horrible, to the point where people stopped a new year's countdown because of it, and prompted Don Ho to start singing about "huge, disgusting bubbles" in the wine.
  • There was an ad for Dr. Pepper which showed a really whipped guy doing embarrassing things for his girlfriend—buying tampons, taking yoga with her, holding her purse while she tries on clothes—then she takes a sip of his Dr. Pepper and he gets pissed and storms out (well, more like he flees in terror). All the while, "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" plays in the background. Perhaps he's a germaphobe? That might provide a more rational explanation.
  • An ad for Tetley Iced Tea had a cartoon character crawling through the desert desperately crying out for water. Then he came across a jug of water, picked it up, and resumed crawling, this time desperately crying out for Tetley.
  • There used to be a series of British beer commercials in which a guy became a superhero after drinking a pint, probably inspired by Popeye's spinach powers. "Oh, it's Tankard, that helps me excel! After one I do anything well!" They were banned on the grounds of false advertising, of course, just like Crunchy Frog.
    • One public service announcement parodied this, by having the 'hero' return to a normal man halfway through his feat of heroism and fall off some scaffolding to his death (or at least a serious injury). It then went on to warn you about the risks of drink making you feel like a super hero.
  • Tim Hortons' initial commercial advertising their new 'steeped' tea went beyond any Commercial Idiocy we've ever heard of. To elaborate, the apparently young, hip and trendy son (note: foot-and-a-half-high mofaux hawk, band t-shirt and baggy jeans with more chains than a dungeon. egad. he must be "hip"!) brings home two cups of tea for his forty-something year old mother. When she remarks that the tea is good, he says "Yeah, it's steeped". Somehow, despite the fact that the word steeped has been a part of the English language since tea was a part of being English, the mother comes to the logical conclusion that her emo-gothwannabe punk of a son has just uttered some hip, new, trendy word. And so she goes on to use steeped throughout the rest of the commercial. Her young daughter models a mini-skirt, and all her mother says is "steeped outfit, honey", instead of "take that off now!" Later, when admiring her elderly neighbour's garden, the mother adopts a hip-hip pose and tells Mrs. Chen that her "garden's looking steeped!" "Garden's looking steeped!" became a minor meme in Canada after this ad.
    • Tim Hortons' Canadian executives had series of ads where one person would be talking about something important, and the other person doesn't hear a word because they were on the way to get an iced cappuccino and can't concentrate on anything else.
  • There's a Coca-Cola commercial that states that the formula for Coca-Cola is broken into two parts, each known by one man. (This much is more or less true, although with more than two people, and there's a backup hard copy in a vault in Coca-Cola's Atlanta HQ.) The commercial goes on to claim that if either of these men were to die society would cease to exist and a hole would tear right through the center of the universe...all because of the lack of Coca-Cola.
  • Sprite did a series of commercials in the 90's specifically subverting this trope. Wimpy looking young guys would drink a Sprite, then try to play basketball against NBA players, or fight against pro-wrestlers, then get both beaten and badly injured. The tagline was "Image is nothing. Thirst is everything".
    • There was a similar commercial in Australia: In the Australian 'bush', a man lies groaning and clutching his leg. Cue rugged bush ranger type (imagine Crocodile Dundee), who starts talking about how to help snakebites.
    "If you were to pour Sprite on the wound... This would do absolutely nothing, because all Sprite does is quench your thirst." [Takes a big drink, as the guy with the snakebite finally stops moving]
  • Bud Light commercials are infamous for this:
    • The "You Got A Raw Deal" segment, where a madman trades away warm clothing in an arctic blizzard for a bottle of beer - and claims the now-warm guy got a raw deal.
    • Two college buddies are down to their last few dollars, and have to choose between a six-pack of Bud Light and a roll of toilet paper. They choose the beer. (Which prompts them to answer the checker's "paper or plastic?" question with an emphatic "Paper!".)
    • Another ad features a bunch of people stranded on an island after their plane crashes. One of the crash victims walks up to the rest of the group and announces that she has found the plane's radio equipment and believes that they'll be able to be rescued....only for the group to ignore her in favor of the man who has found the plane's beverage cart, full of Bud Light. Apparently calling for help and then partying is not an option.
  • One subversion: A beer commercial started with having outlandish claims for their beer (for example, that drinking beers will cause you to understand animals), only to hastily retract said claim when the powers that the beer grant turn out to be less than satisfactory (it turns out the family dog can only say "SAUSAGES!" over and over again).
  • The California Milk Processor Board once ran fairy-tale like ads, one of which Sarah Haskins hilariously summed up as implying that "Milk will bring sunshine to a land devastated by your period tears."
  • Another offender from the dairy industry: A mother is urging her two kids to drink their milk so they can grow up strong. The children scoff, "Mr. Johnson next door doesn't drink milk, and he's fine," they say. And coincidentally, Mr. Johnson is next door in his yard, doing some yardwork. He waves hello to the kids, and they wave back. Then Mr. Johnson leans over to pick up the handles of his wheelbarrow, but when he straightens back up, his arms rip off at the shoulders. "Oh, dear, that's not good," he says. The kids and mother all scream in terror, grab their glasses and start power-chugging their milk.
  • Canadian Club whiskey used to do a series of print ads in the newspaper where they would hide a case of their product in some extremely out-of-the-way location, and invite the reader to go and find it. Apparently they didn't expect people to actually go and look for them, and made them (somewhat) more accessible after discovering that people were doing just that.
  • A NASCAR one: Dale Earnhardt, Jr. will barter his racecar away if that's what it takes to get the last Diet Mountain Dew on the shelf at your convenience store.
  • Pepsi Next had a commercial where a pair of new parents totally ignore their baby taking its first steps...in favor of videoing themselves drinking Pepsi Next because it is the greatest thing that has ever happened in their lives, and talking about how they plan to share the video with all of their friends and family. Presumably the intended message of the ad was supposed to be "Pepsi Next: the drink of choice for negligent parents everywhere".
  • There was at least one Batman Returns tie-in commercial for Diet Coke where someone is stealing Gotham City's power supply. What's Batman going to do? Look around desperately to grab a Diet Coke from a working vending machine.
  • The German "Fritz Kola" (muchmuch caffeine) evidently turns you into a horse-headed monster...and your girlfriend LOVES it. (A bit of NSFW, so Google is your friend.)
  • Another Pepsi example is from 1992, when they decided to phase out their "Generation Pepsi" slogan in favor of a new one. They filmed an elaborated series of commercials to be broadcasted during first quarter of that year's Super Bowl, which started with trucker crushing into a Pepsi billboard, clipping off old slogan from it. Naturally the crash place soon becomes a festival, and new Pepsi slogan becomes a piece of everyone's mind, with celebrities and television personalities all weighting in. Their new slogan? Gotta have it. Don't be surprised if you don't remember it, cause it barely lasted a year, and safe to say it didn't live up to Generation Pepsi.
    The big problem here is how much they overestimated our desire for soda. I mean, to the point where we would turn the billboard into a Woodstock-like mecca and start a national debate over what Pepsi's next slogan should be. I hate to be the one to crush your hopes, Pepsi, but nobody likes you THAT much. [...] If connecting with youth was most important, the most accurate slogan they could adopt would be "I guess I'll have Pepsi." Doesn't sound as catchy though.

    Food 
  • The Trope Namer is a series of ads by The American Dairy Association, which made silly claims about cheese.
    • Parodied in this Bob and George strip, where even Cthulhu is no match for cheese.
    • Parodied in Kid Radd during the break the forth wall week, where Radd destroys the world with the power of cheese. It includes an admonition that a certain number of universes are destroyed every day by people misusing this power, so be careful.
    • The Canadian Association of Dairy Farmers had their own campaign, where people were told that if they wanted to get rid of people who wouldn't go away, they should "stop cooking with cheese".
    • Also parodied in Sluggy Freelance, when Torg is chasing a ghost. He notices that her name, Brie Meighsaton, is evocative of Brie cheese, and begins laughing that it's a really funny name and makes it hard to consider her scary. Then she scares him so much he runs and hides under a bed with the 4th wall caption "Behold the power of cheese".
    • And then there's That's My Sonic's take on the above. It just gets crazier from there.
    • "Granddad, you can't tame the white supremacist power structure with cheese!" "The hell I can't!"
      • He can.
    • There's a flash toon out there where a man rallies all the humans to fight back against alien invaders with "THROOOOW THE CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE!" Of course, the cheese does jack shit to the alien ships. (ASDF Movie)
  • There's a series of ads for "Crunchy Nut" cereal in the UK to this effect, one of which has supermarket staff confiscate the boxes from customers so as they can eat it themselves. Seriously, they couldn't just take one off the shelves unobtrusively and share it? Another ad has a guy walk out of the shop into heavy rain, and, after a moment's decision, use his laptop keep himself dry and keep the cereal safe in its case, even though the cereal is presumably in a waterproof bag inside the box.
    • The latest series of ads has the Crunchy Nut eater getting himself/others around him killed as a result of his addiction to Crunchy Nut. One ad features an Australian-accented Steve Irwin type guy urging his camera crew and a homeowner not to make a noise as he catches a "female red rattler"... until one of them starts noisily crunching on cereal. Another parodies the kitchen scene from Jurassic Park. In both cases, Crunchy Nut is directly responsible for at least one death. "The trouble is, it just tastes too good" indeed.
  • The oft-parodied early '90s TV commercials for Mentos (immortalized specially by the Foo Fighters' "Big Me") almost certainly share Trope Maker status with the above-mentioned cheese ads - each of the ads consisted of a vignette of a person getting away with some sort of improbable feat through the power of Mentos.
    • Parodied by the Strong Bad Email "candy product", when SBLOUNSKCHED!, Strong Bad's candy bar, is advertised similarly.
    Strong Bad: Man, with a candy bar like that, you could get away with anything!
  • Orbit gum commercials. You can go through the most incredible muddy/dusty/dirty situations imaginable, but your teeth are still gleamingly clean and that's all that matters. Fabulous!
    • The best was when Snoop Dog was sent to hell for a 'dirty mouth'...and went to heaven as soon as he chewed Orbit. The disclaimer at the bottom? "Chewing Orbit will not actually get you into heaven."
  • The "Drop the Chalupa!" ads from Taco Bell.
  • Planters Peanuts ran a Super Bowl Special commercial for cashews, in which a homely young woman (complete with uni-brow) turns the heads of all the attractive young men she passed during the normal course of her day. Then we see the start of her day involved dabbing a cashew behind each ear as though it were perfume.
  • Marmite plays it straight and inverts it: they've had people passionately making out just to get that residual Marmite taste from someone's mouth, but also had a starving homeless person throwing away a sandwich because it contained Marmite, as part of their "you either love it or hate it strategy".
  • One advert depicts a rescue team arriving at an Arctic/Antarctic/somewhere very cold base to find the population of the base starving, but they have tons of food supplies. They're only starving because...they've run out of Heinz Tomato Ketchup (you can't eat without it!).
  • A-1 Steak Sauce commercials depict people doing great and rather dumb things to get that last bit out of the bottle, such as one man at a tailgate party attempting to lick it off of a hot barbecue grill. (While sitting in an ambulance afterwards: "Ith my thteak okay?") Probably to avoid being sued by some moron who did do something like that, the ad includes a disclaimer telling people not to do this. Less dangerous versions include the fine-dining restaurant where the waiter carrying expensive wine and A-1 sauce trips, prompting the diner to lunge down in order to save ... the bottle of steak sauce.
  • There was an Oh Henry! commercial where numerous hungry men chase down some guy for the chocolate bar. The chased guy once threw pizzas to slow down the pursuers, but they responded with: "We only want the Oh Henry!" There has got to be some kind of trope on Cheese Vs. Chocolate.
  • There was a radio ad for Quiznos subs, where an employee attempted to trade items of ever increasing value for his co-worker's sub. It culminated in him asking his supervisor to try and persuade him only to find that the supervisor traded his job to the mailman for a sub earlier.
  • A Burger King ad had several people in an assistance group detailing what several people went through for a Burger King Angus Bacon Cheddar Ranch Steak Burger, and trust me, some of them are incredibly stupid, including one leaving in the middle of her own wedding, a man leaving his loved ones at the airport, and a man wrapped head to toe falling out of his wheelchair, just so a guy could sit down to eat his Angus Burger..
    • One series of Burger King commercials feature people bragging about their great accomplishments that warranted being worthy of their burger, followed by someone who isn't worthy who gets lectured. "Wow, you're eating Burger King's new burger. What did you do?" "I gave half my paycheck to starving orphans." "Wow....what about you?" "Ummm...I was hungry?" *gets his face slapped and yelled at for being selfish*
    • There is also the other one when a man is called an arrogant punk because he only helped discover a new moon. "You either discover a moon or you don't."
    • A series of Burger King ads airing in summer 2010 features people who have bought items from Burger King's value menu. Apparently this was such a "smart move" that they are allowed to, in their own words, "be dumb". For example: handling conductive metal rods on the roof of a tall building during a thunderstorm.
    • There's also the "masculinist" ad for a Texas Double Whopper, which included men burning their briefs.
  • Commercials for one kind of ice cream popsicle. One of them was about a guy who spends his only coin rather for a popsicle than a condom (although his girlfriend is hot!), and the second one was about a woman in a prison cell, who manages to steal the ring with the keys from the sleeping guard, but uses the keys not for opening the cell door, but for the freezer in her cell, which contains lots of tasty popsicles.
  • "What would you do-o-o, for a Klondike bar?" The whole ad campaign is based on people doing such things for a Klondike bar, even doing things that would make you enough money to buy thousands.
    • Family Guy parodied this in one episode by having a commercial narrator ask someone if he'd kill a man for a Klondike bar (he does).
    • The Colbert Report made a parody: the German UN ambassador made an appearance on the show, acts like a stereotypically dour German, and dismisses the concept of cupcakes for failing to soothe his existential angst, only to end the interview with, "But the unspeakable things I would do... that I have done... for a Klondike Bar," which he produces and bites into, to thunderous audience applause. You can watch the segment here. The relevant part - about Germany - starts at 3:40, but the entire segment is worth watching for the humor and other messages.
    • On My Name Is Earl Earl's new wife (played by Alyssa Milano) is a Jerkass who took an afternoon to humiliate Randy using "What would you do for a Klondike bar?" as an excuse. Yet she did give him the Klondike bar at the end.
    • Subverted in a spot done for a contest by Kyle Carrozza. A polar bear talk show host asks his polar bear guest what he'd do for a Klondike bar, and in response his guest bursts into song, listing off all the stuff he'd do for a Klondike bar, which all start with the letters K-L-O-N-D-I-K-E. When he's finished, the host says, "Really? I'd just buy one."
    • There was a T-shirt that combines Klondike and WWJD - What Would Jesus Do...for a Klondike bar?
  • Similar to the unreasonable economic argument about the Klondike bar, a commercial for Trident Layers features a man telling his babysitter that he wants to pay her in gum. She happily agrees. The children she was watching and Peeping Tom eavesdropper both cluck about their enthusiasm for the gum, while a phone repairman in his bucket lift across the street somehow hears the conversation and comments that he's upset that no one pays him in gum. Yeah, the poor schmuck has to settle for a paycheck worth hundreds of times more than that single pack of gum.
    • A later commercial shows a man having gotten what would appear to be a huge pay raise. It turns out to be in gum. His wife is not amused.
    • Another involves a construction company buying out an old lady who likes mint with the new mint flavored Layers.
  • One Doritos Super Bowl Special commercial features an office worker asking a snow globe if there will be free doritos at the office that day. He throws the snow globe at a vending machine filled with Doritos.
  • A Dairy Queen ad showed a boyfriend and girlfriend meeting up because she needs consolation after the death of her cat. She's crying and blubbering and he's distracted by his coffee-shake, and finally hugs her with the drink in his hand so that he can sip it over her shoulder.
  • Some years back, Subway had a series of commercials wherein one person would be disgusted with the diet of another, prompting the latter to respond, "It's okay, I had Subway for lunch." Apparently, having Subway for lunch justifies not only questionable eating habits, but any kind of outrageous behavior.
  • The McDonald's Angus Third Pounder is so good you'll want to take your time. The extra cab fares are irrelevant.
  • Twix wants you to believe that eating their candy bars will allow you to pause time and come up with a suitable excuse for reading a book on how to manipulate women. In front of a hot woman. Other commercials take this a step further and suggest that eating them will allow you to come up with convincing lies for cheating on your wife or girlfriend.
  • Unintentionally subverted by a commercial for breakfast corndog-style sausages. Before eating one, a high school student has the sulks and refuses to don his chemistry goggles or perform the assigned experiment. After one bite, he's supposedly become a wannabee chem wiz... yet is now stupid enough to eat breakfast while handling chemicals hazardous enough to require eye protection!
  • In a Product Placement example: Hostess Fruit Pies used to run comic strip ads in comic books in which heroes like Batman could stop the bad guy by tempting him with a fruit pie.
  • There was a commercial for some kind of dog food or treat that showed a little dog somehow walking up five stories up the side of a building to reach his owner, who was leaning out the window with the goody.
  • Many candy commercials aimed at kids will feature some sort of wild transformation to the eater of the candy, such as Airheads (where one's head would transform into a balloon) and Fruit Gushers (where heads became a variety of giant fruits depending on the flavor).
  • This NutriGrain ad.
  • From the Philippines, Greenwich Pizza's Extra Cheesy line of pizzas and commercials. Has lots of ham and Throw It In!. Some of the puns don't quite translate over to English, sadly.
  • Frank's RedHot commercials usually feature a little old lady attributing an astonishing feat, like growing giant pumpkins, to Frank's Red Hot sauce: "I put that shit on everything!"
  • Eagle comic used to feature a regular strip called Tommy Walls. Tommy was just an ordinary boy until he used his magic W sign, which awakened his powers to fight crime! Tommy's powers were limited though, so he was careful recharge them on a regular basis by eating Walls ice-cream... Yup, the entire strip was just a thinly-disguised advert.

    Grooming Products 
  • The AXE and TAG ads, which claim they are more attractive to women than they could possibly be. With a couple of exceptions most modern Sex for Product ads take Refuge in Audacity with this trope. The advertiser gets to associate his product with scantily clad beautiful women, and no one can yell at him because he's obviously kidding.
    • AXE is Lynx in the UK. The ads are even better.
    • One of Lynx's ad campaigns in the UK a few years back had the slogan "spray more, get more". Of course, the audience most likely to interpret this in an irony-free manner- horny 13-year-old boys- are already notorious for using ridiculous amounts of Lynx in place of a shower, without any encouragement.
    • Everyone in Germany who has seen any TV during the 90s will remember this one ad. Revitalizing indeed.
    • And of course the original: Hai Karate. Be careful how you use it.
  • Inverted by Old Spice, which will not turn your man into the dashing suave gentleman in the ad, but will at least allow him to smell like him. I'm on a horse.
  • Schick meanwhile claims that their Quattro Titanium razors will gives you a shave that is so smooth and close, it will cause women at the gym to become distracted and fall off of their treadmills.

    Hotels 
  • Holiday Inn Express has a series of TV ads where someone attempts some highly skilled job (taking over flying a plane when the pilot is unable to, major surgery, a freestyle rap battle, etc...) When someone asks them if they are qualified, they reply, "No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night".

    Household Products 
  • How about those disturbing, harrowing commercials in which an ostensibly perfect mom hides a secret: she has become dependent on chemicals. The pleasure she derives from them goes hand-in-hand with the shame that she feels for enjoying the cheap thrills they provide. She goes to great lengths to hide them from her friends and family, constantly lying, clearly terrified of the prospect that she might be found out. Even worse, she has even begun to have hallucinations in which inanimate objects threaten to expose her secret to the world. Behold, Glade addiction: the new menace tearing apart suburban families.
  • In the 2010s, Canada's Purex toilet paper brand had an ad asking what would happen if families had their Purex toilet paper taken away. Evidently it never occurred to any of these families to buy another brand.
  • The concept would be recycled not long after by Sears Canada, who would pose the same question about their in-house clothing lines. Sears Canada's use of this approach was less successful; the company folded in 2018.
  • A Mattress Firm radio campaign has people realize the answers to all of life's problems (such as finally understanding their relationship with their father) just because they slept on a nice new mattress.

    Insurance 
  • Survival Auto Insurance had (has?) a series of commercials based on the idea that cars not insured by Survival are not worth getting into, even if not doing so means you'll probably die. Made famous by the first commercial, which featured a guy walking in the desert, apparently malnourished and dehydrated, when an attractive woman in a convertible arrives and says "Need a lift?" The dialogue then goes like this: "Are you insured?" "Yes." "By Survival?" "No." "I can't take that ride." Seen here
    • Another featured a back-room poker game where one player raises the stakes by betting his car with the exchange ending with "I can't take that bet." Seen here

    Technology 
  • The camera megastore B&H imply that disasters would happen if a B&H camera wasn't used at the event. The strangest: someone objecting at a wedding because the camera being used to record it wasn't bought from B&H.

    In-Universe Examples 
  • Lord Dunsany's ultrashort story What We Have Come To, in its entirety:
    When the advertiser saw the cathedral spires over the downs in the distance, he looked at them and wept.
    "If only," he said, "this were an advertisement of Beefo, so nice, so nutritious, try it in your soup, ladies like it."
    • His The Reward, a considerably longer piece, further elaborates on the same subject:
    I looked at the legend on the walls of the hell that the angel was building, the words were written in flame, every fifteen seconds they changed their color, "Yeasto, the great new yeast, it builds up body and brain, and something more."
    "They shall look at it for ever," the angel said.
  • In Fredric Brown's short story "Pi in the Sky", astronomers all over the globe being perplexed as they notice the stars begin to move. As the story progresses, it becomes clear they're converging on a particular quadrant of the sky. It turns out they rearrange themselves to spell out "Use Snively's Soap". Really made Mr Rutherford R. Sniveley mad.
  • The VeggieTales song "The Bunny Song" that is used in Rack, Shack and Benny is undoubtedly this trope. It actually got rewritten several times, with the original being sung by Mr. Nezzer about him rebelling against his parents and everything just to get his chocolate bunnies, even refusing to go to school and church. It was rewritten later, due to objections from real world parents, to be Mr. Nezzer rejecting health food in favor of his chocolate bunnies.
  • In Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes is originally Caught in a Snare that Calvin had baited with a tuna fish sandwich. His dialog indicates that he could have easily avoided the trap but to him, tuna sandwiches are just that good.
    Calvin: "Tigers will do anything for a tuna sandwich!"
    Hobbes (Caught in a Snare and munching a tuna sandwich): "We're kind of stupid that way."
  • In the first episode of The Boondocks, Granddad lectures Huey and Riely on "The New White Man," whose bigotry and privilege can be overcome with gourmet cheese. He later tries this out on their new landlord, Ed Wuncler. The two immediately become best friends.
  • Invoked in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Chocolate With Nuts," in which SpongeBob and Patrick become chocolate salesmen. When they fail to sell the candy, they start making outlandish claims about how chocolate can benefit the buyer: it grants immortality, it cures baldness, it brings world peace, it makes you fall in love, it lets you rule the world, etc.


 
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Alternative Title(s): Commercial Idiocy, Mentos Finger

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