www.unstatistical.com

The toiletry arms race

It seems every product on the shelves is in a never ending attempt to better itself and its peers.  Everyone must have seen this, razors being a fine, although obvious example.  How many blades would you like?  Okay, I can understand ditching the cut-throat (there must be plenty of dead people who wish this had happened sooner).  I can perhaps understand the need for more than one blade.  However, five seems a little excessive.  Also, what’s with that spare one on the back of my fusion?  I’m really not sure I need it.

Unfortunately I also have the inexplicable desire to buy that new Gillette.  I don’t like that I need it, but in the same way as a crack addict tends to want more crack, I want that razor.  Maybe that’s a slight hyperbole.  I get this strange sense of excitement when I come home from the supermarket with some new type of liquid, implement or paste that i can some way use to lengthen the amount of time I spend in the bathroom.  Invariably, the sense of joy wears off after a couple of days as I discover that this new, sparklingly packaged, unnecessary object is almost exactly the same, and does exactly the same job, as that it replaced.

Unfortunately for Aquafresh, I do not want to buy their silly new toothpaste.  For those who don’t spend as much time in front of the TV as me (a commendable, but easily accomplished task), this new wonder toothpaste foams.  Yes, I realise most toothpaste foams, but this one looks like it’s a cross between shaving gel and toothpaste that could at any time envelop your mouth in a sticky bubbly mess of  whiteness.  There are several reasons this does not appeal to me.

1. I do not want to be mistaken to be infected with rabies
2. I have it on good authority that the only effect of the foam we currently have is to make orange juice taste horrible
3. It looks expensive
4. I have been brainwashed into a seriously good understanding of the fact that I am unable to reach about 40% of my mouth with a toothbrush (I’m not sure if this allows vomiting or where the mouth technically ends) to the point where I no longer care
5. The advert irritates me

So STFU Aquafresh.

Again, for those who care, a video follows.  Unfortunately the only people with enough time on their hands to upload an ad to YouTube were French.  If you speak french, unlucky.  You will have the unfortunate ability to understand their idiocy.

P.S.  I swear in the French version it says something about anti-freeze.  May add this to above list.

For the truly bored, http://aquafreshisoactive.com.

More single mums than marriages…

Here’s one for you:

THE number of young women having children has for the first time exceeded the number getting married, official figures revealed yesterday.

A survey of those in Britain aged 25 to 29 found that 24 per cent had tied the knot before 25, while 30 per cent had at least one child.

But of women in their mid-to-late 30s, 45 per cent were married before 25, while only a third were mums. The survey was conducted between 2001 and 2003.

The figures were from the Office for National Statistics in its annual Social Trends study of how Britain is changing.

From The Sun

What a load of balls…

There’s a load of statistics that actually mean didly squat. Why can’t laws be introduced to only allow these things to be used in context with enough data to make them of some use? I guess the Suns article wouldn’t be quite as eye catching with standard deviations thrown in.

Dove Pro Age

Want to see some old naked people? Here you go:

This ad was too naked for America and got itself banned. Sad.
Fortunately, over here in the UK, Dove have started airing similar adverts aimed at getting our old people looking good. Well, that’s bollocks, it’s just not going to happen. The ad claims to make your skin all nice and youthful by getting rid of dead skin. Fine, that seems kind of reasonable. Then, like all other adverts of this genre, the ad attempts some science. This is only brief, and is a reference to some miracle substance “AHA”. It doesn’t say what AHA is, it just claims it has lots of it. That’s good to know. Stupid science… Stupid adverts… Stupid world…

HERBASHINE!

Yes, another hair advert… You may have seen it, you may not. It goes a little like this:
Got sh*t hair?
Want shiny hair?
Think bamboo extract will help?
Able to get over the term “herbashine”?
Buy this.

If anyone could mistake this for science then it is probably a good argument for capital punishment. I just have these questions:
How can bamboo help anything (unless you’re a panda)?
Which eejit thought up the word herbashine?
Can I come to the next product meeting?

Here’s an Italian youtube video about it, for those who care. It would seem no one has felt the need to put the English version up.

Over and out.