adverts

Two beliefs, both involving banner ads.

When I was eight, I saw ads for the then-new streaming service Now TV. The ads said "Now Showing" above an image of a movie. I took this to mean that you could ONLY watch the movie shown and literally nothing else on there, and it got replaced with a different movie once a week or so.

Around the same time, I saw an ad with a photo of a little girl and a tagline that was something along the lines of "Lift up her voice. Lift up her life. Give someone else/a(n abused) child/whatever (memories are hazy) a voice. Yours." I took the tagline literally and thought the girl was mute and the ad was for a service that allowed you to literally give a mute child your voice. I wondered why someone would want to just give up their voice like that, even if it was for a commendable reason (even though I now know voice box transplants are actually possible)! It was only when I saw the ad again a few years later that I realised it was actually for a child abuse charity.

Far from voiceless

When I was a boy, I believed that the television stations kept track of everything you bought, and would stop sending commercials to your house advertising those products you already had.

MTC

When commercials for medicines said if you were nursing or pregnant you should not take that medicine, I would always get scared that my mom would die because she couldn't take any medicines since she was a nurse.

eunicorngal

i used to think that every time an add came on that it was live so i thought that the people got to eat the food every time the add came on

samantha

Wheni was young, i thought all the tv ads were done live. Not only was I perplexed at how they did everything the same way each time, but could believe they allowed young kids who starred in the commercial up so late at night

denise thorud

When I was about 8, I saw an ad for Ralph Lauren that said, "First there was Ralph, then there was Lauren" or something like that. I thought it meant that the designer was a guy named Ralph who then had a sex change and became a lady named Lauren. Nowadays I stick to Tommy Hilfiger.

Rachel

When I was little, I saw these commercials on TV about how "sniffing" is bad for you and kills brain cells. I thought it meant that when you have to blow your nose if you don't blow it, but sniff it in instead, then that kills your brain cells. So for years I wouldn't sniff in whenever I had a runny nose. The commercials went off the air for a few years and it wasn't until the end of high school when they re-aired them did I realize that it was referring to sniffing drugs/chemicals and not sniffing snot.

Tobi

When I was a kid, I saw a TV commercial advertising a place that was having a "liquidation sale" because it was going out of business. I had never heard that term before; I thought that it meant whatever merchandise was left unsold at the end of the going-out-of-business sale, they would take and melt down. (You know...liquidate!)

I figured it was some sort of marketing gimmick to coax people into coming to the sale and buying things - nobody wants to see so much stuff go to waste like that, after all. This all made perfect sense to me.

Em

There used to be a TV ad for Brute 33 which went, "where, where, where would you be without Brute 33?" Well my sister used to go around singing, "where, where, where would you be without Fruit Betty Green?"

StillLaughing

I used to believe that comercials are evil beings that would keep appearing until you bought the product.

Anon

when i was younger i didn't grasp the idea you got PAID for appearing in tv adverts, i thought if you were advitising mcdonalds you would get a years free mcdonald food, etc

jay

When I was little I used to think that commercials were live. So I felt bad for the people because they would have to react the same thing over and over every time that commercial came on. Then I found out that they only had to film it once and just replay it.

Dani Rage

When I was little--I would stand in the shower and do a Zest soap bar commerical--and then watch the tv for my commercial to be on. HHmm...never did!

JnMcKm

I used to believe women were not allowed eat yorkie bars

greg

Bismillahir Rahman ir Rahim -- when I was a kid in the 80's I believed (along with a lot of adults, I suspect) that the "cola wars" were terribly serious. I imagined a nation divided in vicious opposition between two warring soft-drink superpowers, and followed developments anxiously, fearful that any day one would crush the other utterly and rise victorious to reign over all Americans with its tyrannical single-soda regime.

Ali

I used to believe that commercials on T.V. were true. I begged my mom to buy the Chips Ahoy cookies with colored sprinkles. After I ate one, I said "Gee, it doesn't taste like a party in my mouth."

K

I used to think that if you ate ready brek you would get an orange glow like the people in the adverts. So when i had a bowl of ready brek i was really exicited and i ate it and nothing happened!

WHY CANT I GET AN ORANGE GLOW

The old commercials for Dow Bathroom Cleaner showed anthropomorphic animated bubbles emerging from the bottle and scrubbing a bathroom (the "Scrubbing Bubbles"). I believed that was literally what would happen if we bought the product, so I begged my mom to buy some. I was extremely disappointed.

Matt

When I was little I used to believe that the people in commercials who were acting out and telling how they were talking to someone and mentioned about a problem and the person they were talking to told them about (name of product) were real people who really were in that situation talking to a person and thatg the person they were talking to really recommended that product. I thought it was all a real situation. I was shocked when I found out that these were paid actors who really didn't have that situation.

Aerith

One day I couldn't remember the ending for the Oscar Meyer song. Humming it to myself, singing it outloud, nothing worked to complete the happy jingle. That's when I came up with my own. . . "cause Oscar Meyer has a way of recombining DNA!" Still makes me smile.

Scottie Bob