"Before this product, I was a fat, lazy, stupid, unwashed schlub who sat on his couch all day eating potato chips and playing Xbox. Now, I'm still a fat, lazy, stupid, unwashed schlub who sits on his couch all day eating potato chips and playing Xbox... but with a cool new hat! Thankyou, This Product*!"
The universal claim of every lifestyle product advertised on late night television is that using it will change your life. Be it cosmetics, diet aids, exercise equipment, financial seminars, etc. your life will be miraculously transformed with the acquisition of the product. The testimonials in these commercials tend to feature crying women or enthusiastic men extolling the life changing features of the product.
So call now! Operators Are Standing By!
Examples:
- Douglas Adams' The Meaning of Liff lampshades this, defining the word 'Liff' as any product which does not live up to its claims, and specifically any book with the words 'This Will Change Your Life!' on the cover. The book itself, of course, had a sticker stating just that.
- The newer edition, The Deeper Meaning of Liff, dropped this gag and redefined the word as "a common object or experience for which no word yet exists," arguably preserving the self-reference.
- Spoofed brilliantly in a commercial for Bubblicious Bursts, which featured oversized bubbles allegedly blown using Bubblicious Burst changing the lives of everyone around them. The announcer billed it as "great for parties!", "fun with cats!" (featuring an uninterested cat standing next to goldfish swimming in the bubble), and even good for helping Dad around the house. "Just ask Superstar Lebron James!" was the next-to-final remark made in the commercial (featuring an image of Lebron blowing a bubble of generic gum with a superimposed thumbs-up over him). The final remark was a large group of people yelling "Thanks, Bubblicious Bursts!" for no particular reason. (Of course, the company included a disclaimer at the end, stating that "Bubblicious Bursts is great for blowing bubbles, and nothing else".)
- The The Kids in the Hall movie Brain Candy features this testimonial endorsing the wonder drug Gleemonex:
"I used to live on the street. Had cardboard bum from sleeping on cardboard. Then Jesus— I mean Dr. Cooper gave me his drug. Now I'm more productive. I'm a security guard. With a gun."
- One of Bernard from Black Books many, many efforts to avoid customers in the store involved him picking up the book closest to the door and handing it to the potential customer, saying "You'll laugh, you'll cry, it'll change your life".
- "If You Buy This Record (Your Life Will Be Better)", a song by The Tamperer, as one might guess from the title, parodies this trope.
- Around 2010, satellite television service DirecTV promoted itself using the slogan "Get DirecTV today: it'll change your life."
- This is parodied in the Tom Waits song "Step Right Up
", sung from the point of view of a salesman.
Tired of being the life of the party?
Change your shorts, change your life
Change your life
Change into a nine-year-old Hindu boy, get rid of your wife - A radio Public Service Announcement for British weapon enforcement campaign Trident parodies this trope grimly:
Narrator: There's a guy I know. Got himself a gun. Said it would change his life.
He was right - it completely changed his life.
He's dead. - At the end of season 2 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., focus is given on a brand of fish oil supplements making this claim. It's even more true than the company knows - during the final battle of the season, Daisy knocked a crate of Terrigen crystals into the ocean, which dissolved into the water and was breathed in by the fish. As a result, the next season starts off with large numbers of people undergoing Terrigenesis after consuming Terrigen-contaminated fish oil tablets or seafood.
- Dave Barry started a column about college by saying that young people who don't go to college will enter the job market with no useful skills, whereas those who do will enter the job market with no useful skills and several thousand dollars worth of debt.
- * Troper General's warning: This Product may cause nausea, vomiting, ulcers, diarrhoea, repetition, internal haemorrhaging, fever, fluid in mouth, fluid in lungs, fluid in bones, fluid in fluids, fluid... in your pants, giant festering boils, pestilence, famine, war, death, conquest by religion, repetition, repetitiveness, exploding eyeball, painful death, abnormally fast bone growth, singing venereal worms, slow death, mild killing sprees, improbably vast breasts, malignant stomach, spontaneous dismemberment, licky end, false sheep pregnancy, megalomaniacal spleen, psychotic uvula, repetition, explosive exploding explosions, hallucinations of bats if you're lucky, achy-breaky heart, knock-knees, pigeon toes, bow legs, implosion to black hole and the destruction of the entire fabric of reality, horrible death, repetition, and repetition. Not for indoor or outdoor use. Do not operate or come within fifteen miles of heavy machinery. Keep out of reach of children under the age of 35. Do not taunt the This Product. Offer Void in Nebraska. May contain traces of nuts. Not Kosher for Passover. Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr. Walrus.
