Do Not Attempt to Mimic Magnum Ice Cream and Ace Hardware

This week’s edition is a double feature, first from Ace Hardware:

Then from Magnum Ice Cream:

Notice the fine print on both?:

We shouldn’t walk on top of cars? Unfortunately, there is a time honored tradition in movies of this action. Whether it is tracking aliens, watching horse races, shooting aliens, or robbing cars, everyone seems to turn out fine. Oh, wait; maybe it’s a bad idea after all.

Thanks for reader David Marrin for the idea submission.

Ancestry.com and Vonage, Fortune and Fame

Here is an ad I saw for Ancestry.com:

The fine print on this one might be hard to read:

“Actor Portrayal”

While plenty of commercials use actors and actresses, you rarely see fine print about it. I guess Ancestry.com felt obligated since they were making claims and faked details. My question is why do they need to pay actors in the first place? Is their product not good enough where they can find a real person who found cool genealogy stuff on their website? Why don’t they just use actual customers like in the Vonage ad below:

And the bonus fine print:

Apparently I missed the memo about being able to appear on TV hocking your favorite stuff. I’m sure the offer for my testimonial for Skittles and Five Guys got lost in the mail or something.

Is it Jeep or Jip Wrangler?

Here is another car ad that makes an appearance on this blog:

This fine print is a long one:

What’s the point of showing all these cool stunts the car can do, when it cannot even do it? How lame has Jeep become that crossing a puddle is not covered by the warranty? It can only cross 20 inches of water? That’s good to know so next time I’m getting chased by aliens/zombies/dinosaurs through the swamp I’ll make sure to bring my yard stick and measure before crossing.

This week’s edition comes with a bonus fine print. Lenny Kravitz is obviously not driving through that water and is not the professional driver. They had to make sure the Jeep was extra clean for his fancy leather outfit.

Thanks to reader Sarah Stone for the idea submission.

Do Not Lose Your “Focus” While Driving This Ford

Here is a cute ad for a Ford Focus:

The fine print is kind of hard to read over the busy dashboard:

I think I would pass on a new feature that needs three sentences of warnings. If it is that dangerous, why bother using it? I am more concerned with the last sentence about the car locking features out while driving. When this happens, the driver would just use their phone anyway, defeating the purpose of this fancy feature. I can just imagine a new driver trying to figure why their MyFordTouch isn’t working, then wham! My Ford Taurus gets rear-ended.

Thanks to reader Erryn Gallasch for the idea submission.