I've been feeling a little blue lately...

So what is it about the color blue that the TV ad guys think we automatically associate with valid scientific tests?

I know that might not make much sense, but stay with me for a second.

I recently noticed that whenever you see test tubes or lab beakers on television, they're always full of that same clear blue liquid. It's almost the same color as the chemicals in a Porta-Potty. It's the same color as Sani-Flush. It's the same color as window cleaner.

I hate that color. Mostly because when I see that color, my mind instantly conjures up the smell of either Windex or toilet bowl cleaner, neither of which are on my list of favorite smells.

On TV, it may turn another color after they do whatever they're doing to it, but it almost always starts out that uniform shade of medicinal blue.

There is one exception to this rule: Antacids are always demonstrated using Some Other Color. I'm thinking that perhaps the logic there is that blue would be too soothing a color to represent acid indigestion, but I'm just guessing here.

Think about it. Paper towel commercials are always showing off their absorbency by being stuffed into glasses of blue water, or soaking up blue spills on the countertop. I mean, seriously, who spills blue stuff? Nobody I know, except for those people who drink that blue GatorAid, and they should be beaten within an inch of their lives.

Then there's always the tampon and maxi-pad ads: Yeah, there's that blue liquid again.

Now, I realize that for obvious reasons, the color red would be a spectacularly bad choice for either of the last two examples -- reality of the situation be damned -- however, in the paper towel arena, red could be the impetus for some interesting and disturbing commercials.

As your host, it is my duty to provide you with an example:



So anyway, my twisted imagination aside, I'm casting my vote for purple or green. It's different, it's eye catching, and you can still pour it on top of a maxipad or swipe it off a bar top without grossing out your TV audience.

Anything but that damn blue.

Oh, and feel free to take the feminine hygiene ads off the television completely. Every possible thing people of either sex need to know about them can be learned by reading the back of the box in the drug store. Same goes for all commercials that contain any of the following words:

1. Burning
2. Itching
3. Bloating
4. Not so Fresh
5. Mucus Membranes
6. Lubrication
7. Dysfunction
8. Wet and Sticky*

And what's with the cartoon bears wiping their asses with Charmin behind the tree? No matter how soft that stuff is, there's no way hairy bear ass is even coming close to clean without a pre-moistened wipe of some sort.

*new entry