Sunday, June 02, 2013

Marketing

I find my head hurting when I pay-more-than-is-healthy-for-my-sanity attention to things. Subliminal advertising. Even though I'm not, by choice, subjected to the incessant onslaught of such rubbish from teevee. But I read ingredients on tins and containers and boxes for in our blessed-by-Obama-and-Harper-Monsanto world I need to be.

Case in point is this box of tissues:




I remember, and not too short a few years ago when one got 200 to a box. That was standard. Now the companies who make them, from what we hope are sustainable forests, have shaved the quantity away until the box now contains 132. 132. Nearly 1/2. The box remains, of course, the same size and has increased dramatically in price.

Then I look at the symbol of the Royale company which happens to be kittens. I remember - possibly an urban legend - a few years back a report of how these white fluffy kittens had died under the hot studio lights. Sacrificial kittens. On the altar of nose and toilet tissue. As to the kittens symbolizing the product I know the last thing I'd want would be their claws on my privates or nostrils. And now, if their deaths are true, every box and roll is like a memorial to the merchandising sacrifice of those wee felines. (I did a web search and not a thing on the death of those babies - maybe Kleenex in their wipe rivalry had a hand in that?)

If that were not enough though, the box also tells me that the tissues are hypoallergenic. Shouldn't tissues be? Shouldn't that be a given? I mean if you're busy honking away with your head cold the last thing you'd need would be an allergic reaction to your paper hanky surely? And what of the tissues from way back which were not (I assume) hypoallergenic? Should I be worried about dormant allergens nesting quietly in my lungs waiting to break out and kill me in some weak moment? Note: there is no medical definition for the word hypoallergenic



Bafflespeak. 1984? - We've left you far, far behind.

16 comments:

  1. I'm skeptical about the dead kitten story - seems like that would have been findable. But yes, I sure have noticed the decrease in quantity of things while the packaging stays the same and the price goes up.

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  2. I just checked my man sized tissue box, it contains 100 2 ply tissues.

    Whatever about the hypoallergenic variety, a friend was buying tissues for me some months ago and picked a box containing real aloe vera and vitamin E. I ended up with very sore skin, but once I went back to the plain ones the problem disappeared.

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  3. Maybe the kittens were deliberately buried? H'm. Power of corporate media 'n all that?

    Yes, the shrinkage is an attempt to dupe us all, but I'm on to it.

    Yer welcome.

    :)

    XO
    WWW

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  4. GM:

    The cure being more deadly than the disease obviously.

    They take us all for fools.

    XO
    WWW

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  5. when we should be using washable handkerchiefs.... but i am guilty about using disposable tissues, too.

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  6. When I was young, washable handkerchiefs were the norm, but washing them was a pretty horrible process. I remember huge pans of them boiling away on the stove.

    In theory tissues are better, but what with the landfill problem and the dodgy chemicals, are they really such an improvement?

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  7. It's not just there, it's here, too, where everything from cookies to Kleenex offers less and costs more. Corporations may have taken us for fools when this whole less for more process began; now we are simply being taken.

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  8. Same here with toilet rolls - same price, few sheets - not that I keep score while I sit on the loo!

    It takes a lot of hard work and energy to be a good consumer.

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  9. Laurie:
    I do use some washables but not always handy and they get somehow lost in the laundry process, like socks taking a run for it. :)
    XO
    WWW

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  10. Nick:
    I don't believe they are. And who's to say they're not increasing the runniness of our noses?
    XO
    WWW

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  11. Pauline:
    I never ceased to be amazed, truly stunning what dupes they think we all are, time to do for ourselves...
    XO
    WWW

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  12. LadyLuz:

    But worth it. The dishonesty of Big Corp is truly staggering...

    XO
    WWW

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  13. Those little baby washclothes make great hankies.

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  14. Full disclosure? Subliminal messages? Information overload? We live in very interesting times.

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  15. Thank you Hattie, I must remember this and get some. I normally use cotton scarves but they are large and unwieldy.

    XO
    WWW

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  16. Yes Ramana, interesting but scary too as most people are fast asleep and maybe I should be too.

    XO
    WWW

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