History FridgeHorror / Advertising

* The Jello-O Pudding ads with "pudding face dad". If the accidental nightmare fuel of a creepy Stepford smile morphed into a Joker's smile isn't bad enough, after seeing this two or three times, you begin to see the squick interaction between daddy and daughter. The man seems to be ENJOYING the scolding he's getting from his daughter (who only looks about 14-15). And she seems to KNOW it, playing it up with the stern look and crossed arms. It looks so DELIBERATE to this troper. IncestYay combined with an implied BDSM relationship? Makes the creepy smile seem so insignifficant, doesn't it?

* Trix: children starve a rabbit, insisting that their cereal is for them and not to be consumed by rabbits.

* The Mucinex commercials feature anthropomorphized mucus that are moving into a human's lungs, throwing family reunions, and playing with their children. At the end of the commercial, with the aid of Mucinex, the human coughs up the mucus, evicting them from their lungs. Congratulations, you just made an entire family homeless.

* The Jello-O Pudding ads with "pudding face dad". If the accidental nightmare fuel of a creepy Stepford smile morphed into a Joker's smile isn't bad enough, after seeing this two or three times, you begin to see the squick interaction between daddy and daughter. The man seems to be ENJOYING the scolding he's getting from his daughter (who only looks about 14-15). And she seems to KNOW it, playing it up with the stern look and crossed arms. It looks so DELIBERATE to this troper. IncestYay combined with an implied BDSM relationship? Makes the creepy smile seem so insignifficant, doesn't it?

* Four words: [[EverythingsEvenWorseWithSharks Snickers]]. [[ImAHumanitarian Peanut]]. [[KilledOffForReal Butter]]. [[PlayedForLaughs Squared]].

** Thankfully, it's a little better in the games and flash cartoons, where we get to see that the kids are actually getting along fairly well, [[ElementalShapeshifter Sandy Mandy]] [[CursedWithAwesome included]] Although, it's hard to say for Pancake Peggy, who doesn't even seem capable of moving around much...

* Some insurance commercials (i.e. life insurance) sell themselves as offering protection for you and your loved ones, especially cute, innocent little children. It's heartwarming... until you remember what insurance is actually for.
** The whole point of showing kids etc in those commercials was for you to remember what life insurance was for. This is more of an example of ScareEmStraight (into buying our product) than a FridgeHorror example.
** Similarly, any and all funeral commercials that use similar tactics.
** A similar tactic was used by Michelin in the '80s. Their commercials featured babies sitting inside tires and the slogan "Because So Much is Riding on Your Tires." Cute commercials--until you realize the implication is that these babies will be hurt or die if you use another brand of tire.

* M&M's commercials, especially the recent ones depicting individual M&M's trying desperately to hide themselves from humans who want nothikng more than to mash them apart with their teeth. Seeing the look of pure horror on their colorful faces is enough to make anyone think twice about that next handful...well, maybe...

* Any "anthromorphic food" ads; the happy pig selling barbeque, the Happy Meal guys, etc. The whole cheerful, sentinent, wants to be eaten, and sometime alive is pervasive and horrifying.

* I just commented to my mom this morning that the recent Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercials where they keep trying to lick/eat one another is basically cannibalism.

* Sex toy manufacturer Tantus Toys features advertisements which cheerfully announce that "with a little care, Tantus Toys can last a lifetime." As in one's ''whole life.'' From the time someone buys them until when the buyer is... [[{{Squick}} oh.]] [[BrainBleach My.]] [[NauseaFuel God.]]

**** You're really bothered by the fact that reprocessed meat is ground-up chicken carcass? You do realise what the process of ''eating'' itself entails, don't you? The kids in the end of that video took those ''intact, wholesome chicken legs'', mashed the white meat into paste with their teeth, dissolved the paste in hydrochloric acid in their stomachs, and ran the whole acidic mushy mess through half a mile of intestines until only a bit of brown sludge remained. And you think the ''chicken in a blender'' is upsetting? I mean at least doing it that way you get a good dose of calcium and protein from the otherwise-trashed bones and marrow, as well as reduce waste by using the whole bird. Win/win I say, bring on the blender nuggets!

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT64sfNWEbw This]] Axe commercial is [[NightmareFuel disturbing enough]] [[LetsMeetTheMeat in it's own right]], but a ''{{Cracked}}'' [[http://www.cracked.com/article_17093_10-awesome-ads-for-traumatizing-children_p2.html commentator]] gives us an even more upsetting fact to add to this:

** In another commericial, three kids are shown thousands of feet in the air sitting on top of a rainbow while eating skittles. One of them begins to wonder if the rainbow exists or not. Suddenly the part of the rainbow he sitting on opens like a trap door and he begins falling out of the sky while the others showing little to no concern. Although it's not shown, we already know what's going to happen next...