Smithwicks Monde Selection

Credit where credit's due to the good people at Smithwicks who have won a medal at the Monde Selection. This just isn't any old bullshit product marketing award where, for example,

Applicants must fill in the entry form and product registration thoroughly before sending these two documents by fax, e-mail or post to Monde Selection who will, on receipt, provide confirmation of participation and invoice with payment being due within 30 days of receipt and all bank charges at the customer’s cost.

Further examination of their website reveals that,

Monde Selection are an international Institute For Quality Selections ... the beers jury is chaired by Mrs C. Liétar, an eminent and recognised retired lecturer & professor who used to work as an expert in the brewery industry.

Love it. She used to work as an expert in the brewery industry.

But to be fair Smithwicks didn't just win any old medal. They won, as their expensive new labelling reveals, a Gold Medal which is only awarded to,

Products obtaining an average result between 80% and 89%

Presumably they were just below average in the rest of the tastings.

Bee Specialists

The best-known bee species is the European honey bee, which, as its name suggests, produces honey, as do a few other types of bee. Human management of this species is known as beekeeping or apiculture.

Timotei Shampoo

I find myself more than usually troubled by the new Timotei adverts that seem never to be off the telly. Which, in turn, these days, never seems to be off Nick Jnr.

I'm guessing that these ads are aimed squarely at mothers who will well remember the original, inexplicably famous, campaign. This, coupled with the likelihood that a day's childminding is unlikely to have left Mum's hair at its most "volumised" or "voluptuous", will render the demographic as particularly "ripe for the picking" (to use a marketing term).

Talking of which, here's the thrust of the ad. The good people at Timotei care so much about your hair that they literally scour the world to steal nature's finest edible ingredients like:

Pink grapefruit from Spain
Acai berry from Brazil
Avocado Oil from South Africa
Pistachio Seed from Persia
Macadamia from Australia

Then, they take all these mouthwatering treats and they simply tip them into a big industrial vat full of the original Timotei they couldn't sell back in the seventies. In short the bastards make shampoo.

Shame on them!

Lidl Trolley

Can we take from this that grown adults are now allowed to ride in the shopping trolleys? That's certainly not borne out by my own experience.

Traditional Butcher

By "Traditional Butcher" I'm guessing they mean that they sell dead animals. But all cut up so's that they don't look so much like dead animals any more. Then again, perhaps they mean "Please don't ask us for any of that fancy stuff you've seen on the telly".

Perhaps we'll never know.

Bellababy

I suppose we must assume that if the good people at "bellababy.ie" have gone to all the trouble of getting an expensive sign made up, they must mean what they say on it. So, in that spirit let me commend them fully to you for all your baby shopping needs. For they truly are:

Baby Shopping at it is very best!

Carling Lager

Maybe this says much about the circles I move in (insofar as I move in any circles at all) but I don't think I've ever seen anyone, not an Irish person at any rate, sip a pint all the way. The rare time you see a sip is when a pint requires transportation from bar to table without spillage. Often a quick extract is taken just before the change is handed over. A common enough sight and a small, but vital, component of pub esoterica. Pints, certainly pints of Guinness, are gulped or sometimes, by drinkers of a certain vintage you'll note, poured directly into the gullet. A fine skill taking years to train up to. This practice slows down after the 3rd or so but never reduces to anything approaching a mere sip. My goodness, no!

The good people at Carling are suggesting that their lager has a "GREAT TASTE. EVERY SIP OF THE WAY" and who is to say they're wrong about that. I don't know anyone who drinks Carling. If I did I'd ask them about the sipping thing with academic curiosity. Is it true or yet more blue-sky hooey from pony-tail sporting marketing featherbrains with fat arses? If I drank Carling personally I'll tell you this. I'd drink it really quick. Then I'd jump in front of the nearest moving articulated vehicle. That'd learn 'em.

The Last AirBender

This is either:

• About a piss-up on a plane, or
• A modern Top Gun-esque treatment of man-on-man love in the cockpit.

I don't know which but, thankfully, it's definitely the last one. So that's encouraging.

Seen To Be Different

But don't, for the love of God, actually be different.

Mr. KarWash

That's with a kicking kay. Like in daft kunts.

Irish Peat Turf Fire

Sadly, here we have an Oirish Peat Turf Fire (with Peat Incense) for only twenty-six of your Tourist Euro. It comes with one full fire and two ambient ones. All fires will provide an "ancient presence" (carrying the memory of trees and fields and long-gone times) and are looped for continuous viewing up to and beyond actual death. This DVD will fit inside any New World telly.

The Dealer

On our estate, it's very easy to find the dealer. A child could do it.

Buy 2 Pay More

Buy one get one half price. Was there ever a bigger scam that we, poor saps that we are, unblinkingly, gratefully even buy into.

But I only want one book.
Fine then, that'll be eleven fifty.
But look, the RRP is seven ninety-nine.
Fuck off then - this is how we do things now.

So you walk around WH Smiths with the rest of the flobbing morons carrying one book you want to buy in search of another book you might at a push take as per the new book buying directive that is now written into LAW.

Perhaps the only reasonable way to make any profit from this is to simply buy two copies of the new Ben Elton and give them to people you really, really hate.

Let It Rain

Let it rain. I suppose they mean after they've done your roof. Do your worst rain. All those losers who used a different roofing company or didn't bother with a roof at all are goosed but who cares? Not us. We're cosy.

At first I thought they meant Let it rain (then we can come fix your leaky roof). But that would be a bit like a cancer clinic using the strapline 'Let them Smoke'. Which would be stupid. And cruel.

Either way. Let it rain. Annoying.

The Fashion, 1977

Back in the olden times, nineteen hundred and seventy-seven, when this garden centre opened, this is how little posh gardenery kids used to dress. Apparently.

Taking care of YOU and YOUR family

The idea of purchasing healthcare products is well understood. You might need some cream for that persistent rash or some Calpol for the kids. You pays your money and they give you the stuff. That's the normal operating flow of the thing.

So, at an absolute push, and in the most general sense possible, you might concede that they are:

Taking care of YOU and YOUR family!

Unless of course you're buying, say, a pregnancy kit for your dentist's wife.

The 33rd Flavour

In which Irish Stew becomes the 33rd flavour.

Bullshit No More

I love the simplicity of this. You move to a new country and start again. Leaving all the bullshit behind. You build a great business that benefits all.

• Differentiators no more.
• Core Competencies no more.
• Persuasion Process no more.
• Value Add no more.
• Drive-In Dry Cleaners no more.

It's the Hungarian Food Store. For Hungry people. Come on in.

Drive-In Cleaners

One can only suppose that by "DRIVE-IN" they mean "PARK-OUTSIDE".

An Undergrowth Movement

I think, pretty sure, that they are trying to imply underground. As in secret or subversive.

"Not secret enough", you might say. Before adding, "Anyway, what could possibly be subversive about berry fucking cider?". You'd have a point.

But they actually say undergrowth. As in, well, under growth. Like where berries grow.

I don't know. I suppose it'll just have to be yet another to file under Shit Advertising, Shit Product [1]. If we can be squeeze it in.

[1] of course I haven't tasted it!