I have an annoying habit of noticing things that seem to bother me, and no one else. I have an even more annoying habit of sharing those things with people who don’t seem to mind. And I have an intensely annoying compulsion to continue until others see just what was bothering me to begin with.
I could go over a litany of verbal abuses, but Tim Warner over at Mother Tongue Annoyances already has an online encyclopedia of etymological effluvia. So I’ll try to stay orientated to the advertising and pop culture linguistic lashings. And this time around, I’ll be taking a bite out of Nature Valley‘s new 100% Natural Cereal.
This one had my head swimming for a few minutes, because it was potentially wrong in multiple, yet contradictory ways. Here is the box on the right.
I can’t recall what the commercial looked like, because I only heard the offending phrase in passing: “It’s made with actual chunks of granola bars!”
I’m still getting used to my DVR, and didn’t have the presence of mind to record it. (Besides, with 16 hours of Heroes, 12 hours of Battlestar: Galactica, and 18 hours of Avatar, we’re not flush for frivolous programming.)
This has been several days ago – and I haven’t seen the ad again. Apparently, the product is new, and there is very little to be found by Googling. So, gaze at that ingredient label for all the proof you need:
Rice.
Sugar.
Granola bar pieces.
And here’s an excerpt from the news release from March the 2nd:
Nature Valley(R) cereal is made with real Nature Valley Granola Bar bits, crisp rolled oats and lightly toasted multigrain flakes.
…which leads us smack into the Bizarro World of advertising copy.
- How can something made of eleven different ingredients (not counting the six needed to make “crisp rice”) be “100 Percent Natural?”
- How can you sell bits of something that is essentially bits of things stuck together?
And, ironically enough — is it possible to violate #1 and #2 at the same time? Because I don’t know what bothers me more: that an artificial amalgam of stuff can be called natural, or that somehow the fact that they’ve been broken from the amalgam makes those parts better than the parts they were before they were parts of granola. Wouldn’t it be easier (and cheaper) to use granola ingredients? Should I start selling bits of gravel as “pre-broken concrete?”
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Nature Valley, General Mills, cereal, granola[/tags]
With reference to a past local raging inferno, I am still trying to figure out how a property tax increase is actually a property tax decrease. Maybe Nature Valley got the ideas from Montgomery politics.
“Forget insulting everyone’s intelligence, let’s just all make a boatload of money.”
Ron – welcome to my little corner of the web. Stick around, we’ll have some fun. We might make fun of Drew.
I like anyone that will write an editorial and express an opinion even though no one else might agree, even perhaps vehemently disagree. I did the same.. it’s way my site is named bollocks. I write on life in general and say what I want because I can. Take a look. I’m linking you . Thanks for the read.
I thought mine was the only mind that worked like this.
After watching this commercial, I’m just left wondering the name of the actress who plays the little old lady offering samples of the Nature Valley Cereal. She appears to be the same actress who appeared as the scary old lady at the end of Tenacious D’s music video for “Tribute.” Anybody know her name?
I thought I was the only one who saw these commercials. I’ve been asking people if they’ve seen it but noone has. The actress’ name is Linda Porter apparently. look her up on imdb.com