Basic Trope: A claim is made about a product that is true, but has no significance or bearing on the product's quality.
- Straight: Hatter's Choice Teas are advertised as being "fat-free, calorie-free, and sugar-free, provided you don't add milk or sugar". While this is true, it's true of all tea leaves.
- Exaggerated:
- Hatter's Choice Teas are advertised as containing no cyanide.
- "We swear by Crystal Dragon Jesus that our cereal boxes are FINALLY free of rabid mongooses with poison-dripping skin and laser-beam shooting eyes! Seriously!"
- Downplayed: Their herbal teas are advertised as "caffeine-free", just in case buyers don't know what "herbal tea" is.
- Justified: Hatter's Choice Teas needs to market its products and set its products apart from the rest, and still follow truth-in-advertising laws. (Truth-in-advertising laws + marketing x dimwitted potential buyers)
- Inverted: For some insane reason, Hatter's Choice Teas are advertised as containing cyanide. This claim is not only false, but would also hinder their sales.
- Any products that might contain cyanide are labeled as containing it by default, and Hatter's Choice Teas didn't want to pay the money to do the lab work showing their tea doesn't contain it.
- Hatter's Choice Teas are forced by law to advertise that they contain cyanide, because they are processed on a factory line that also handles almonds and thus technically contain trace amounts of it.
- Subverted: Here Comes the Science: the antioxidant benefits of Hatter's Choice Teas are trumped up.
- Double Subverted:
- A simple Ooglegay search would show that a) Hatter's Choice Teas have the same antioxidants as any other tea, b) the claims are not exaggerated, and c) one would have to drink gallons of tea (Hatter's Choice or any other) every day to get the alleged health and beauty benefits of said antioxidants.
- But so are about half their competitors.
- Parodied:
- Hatter's Choice Teas are advertised as matter-free, which is obviously not true.
- "Only Hatter's Choice Teas are produced by Hatter's Choice!"
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- Hatter's Choice does not trump up claims about their product being calorie-free and sugar-free
- Hatter's Choice Teas are advertised as fair-trade, organic or high quality - qualities which can be much more easily advertised than others.
- Enforced: "We want a bad ad campaign for our fictional company, to show that our main characters - the company's customers - are dumb and therefore heroic." "I know! Let's have them advertise claims that are given. They could sell 'arsenic-free' candy bars or something."
- Lampshaded: "Hatter's Choice Teas: Calorie-free, Naturally"
- Invoked:
- Hatter's Choice Teas want to market their product to a world that no longer drinks tea for its own sake, and is obsessed with dieting.
- Hatter's Choice is going for a Captain Obvious angle for its advertising campaign.
- Exploited: Alice saw Hatter's Choice Teas' advertisement for calorie-free teas and uses it to convince her family, who only drinks things advertised as low-calorie, to start drinking tea too.
- Defied: Hatter's Choice knows that the general public can easily find out that their product is no more or less calorie-free than any other tea, and decides to find another way to advertise.
- Discussed: "Since when do tea leaves have carbs, fat, and calories?" "They don't, unless you add milk and/or sugar. Hatter's Choice just wants to jump on the Health Kick Bandwagon to make more money."
- Conversed: "They're advertising their tea leaves as 'calorie-free'? That's a given! It would never work in Real Life!"
- Implied: There is a big zero on the box, as in "zero calories".
- Played For Laughs: Bob reads the "calorie-free" claims on the Hatter's Choice Tea packaging, and assumes that other brands of tea leaves contain calories.
- Played For Drama: Bob reads the "cyanide-free" claims on the Hatter's Choice Tea packaging, and assumes that he's going to die because he recently drank another brand of tea. While panicking, he accidentally kills Alice and Charlie.
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