Unfortunate Ingredients is an advertising trope. It is technically not starving (ad tropes have a lower threshold), but it is being misused - the trope is intended to be about renaming ingredients sparking outrage, but is being misused as any troublesome ingredient. May need a rename, might just be cuttable as it's a sparsely used ad trope from 2009.
Checking 13 wicks.
Correct usage (ingredients must be rebranded) 1/ 13
- Mascot: Sugar Bear for Super Sugar Crisp (now called Super Golden Crisp). At the end of The '70s, sugar gained a reputation not unlike arsenic or Zyklon B, so the word "sugar" was dropped from the names of all major cereal brands in the United States (Sugar Frosted Flakes became Frosted Flakes, Sugar Smacks became Honey Smacks, Sugar Pops became Sugar Corn Pops and then Corn Pops, etc.). But what do you do when your mascot has "Sugar" for his first name? Why, you emphasize the "Super" in the cereal's name instead, by having him transform into Super Bear — a full sized grizzly bear with an angry expression and teeth and claws. Needless to say, this wasn't the best image to associate with a product aimed at young easily-frightened children, and Super Bear quickly regained Sugar Bear's teddy-bear-like face
before being dropped entirely. Discusses the renaming of sugar.
Indexes and such 3/ 10
- Food Tropes: Unfortunate Ingredients: Renaming bad-sounding ingredients to make them sound better. I'm being very generous claiming this index as a correct usage.
- Laconic.Unfortunate Ingredients: Renaming evil-sounding ingredients to make them sound more appealing.
- Visit unabridged version HERE Yep, that sure is a Laconic page.
- Sandbox.Pre 2010 Starving Tropes: Unfortunate Ingredients (May 14th, 2009): Renaming evil-sounding ingredients to make them sound more appealing. 22 wicks See Food Tropes.
Incorrect, ingredients have not been renamed, or other misuse 9/ 13
- Asbestos-Free Cereal: Contrast Unfortunate Ingredients. The contrast between these two tropes may actually contribute to Trope Decay on AFC - AFC is for any meaningless claim in ads, not just claiming a lack of harmful substances as the trope name would have you think.
- Glassy Prison: In Good Eats, Cocoa Carl is being kept in one of these (in a Shout-Out to The Silence of the Lambs), as Alton comes to question him about the ingredients in a protein bar manufactured by his company that was being marketed as "health food". Ingredients weren't renamed, at least as far as I can tell.
- Greenwashed Villainy: Slaxx: Canadian Cotton Clothiers is a boutique clothing company aimed at young hipsters who market their clothes with a "socially responsible" image of eco-friendliness and fair trade. In truth, CCC uses GMO cotton and child labor to make their clothes. The villain is the ghost of a 13-year-old Indian farm laborer who died in a workplace accident and seeks her revenge on the greedy Western corporation and consumers she died serving. Just says that the GMO Cotton is bad without explaining why.
- Slaxx: Greenwashed Villainy: Canadian Cotton Clothiers is a boutique clothing company aimed at young hipsters who market their clothes with a "socially responsible" image of eco-friendliness and fair trade. In truth, CCC uses GMO cotton and child labor to make their clothes. The villain is the ghost of a 13-year-old Indian farm laborer who died in a workplace accident and seeks her revenge on the greedy Western corporation and consumers she died serving. Second verse, same as the first.
- HarsherInHindsight.Advertising Commercials for Breyers ice cream used to feature kids having trouble reading the ingredient labels of competitors, struggling to pronounce things like "polysorbate 80" and "mono and diglycerides", but can easily read the much simpler list of Breyers' ingredients containing things like milk and natural vanilla. However, Unilever has been cutting costs in the brand, so it features those same ingredients nowadays and is even marketed as "frozen dairy dessert" due to the use of the cheaper skim milk and whey (a byproduct of cheese) instead of whole milk and cream. The Unfortunate Ingredients are the polysorbate and the diglycerides, and they have not been renamed.
- Literature.Dangerous Visions: Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: "Novocain; morphine; curare; vlut, a rare Central Asian poison which induced temporary blindness; olfactorcain, a top-secret smell-deadener used by skunk farmers; tympanoline, a drug which temporarily deadened the auditory nerves (used primarily by filibustering senators); a large dose of Benzedrinel lysergic acid; psilocybin; mescaline; peyote extract; seven other highly experimental and most illegal hallucinogens; Eye of Newt and toe of dog." Misuse, should be Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking instead.
- Series.The Galloping Gourmet: Unfortunate Ingredients: The food featured less than healthy ingredients, particularly large amounts of clarified butter. At one point, a member of the audience criticized him for this, to which he replied...Graham: Madam, you could go outside and get run over by a bus and just think what you would have missed! No renaming ingredients.
- VideoGame.We Happy Restaurant: Unfortunate Ingredients: What's sold as "tofu" is clearly made out of tortured animals. Not about renaming ingredients. This is about actual unfortunate ingredients.
- WesternAnimation.Funny Face: Unfortunate Ingredients: The original drink contained cyclamate. This page isn't even about the product, it's about a spinoff show.
