<p>How many times a night do I have to watch an ad about a med for enlarged prostate, a med for erectile disfunction, a med for acid-reflux ???
I hardly watch any TV and yet it seems I am bombarded by those ads! And by the way, I do not suffer form any of the above…</p>
<p>I always DVR my favorite shows then go back and watch them at a later time. That way I can fast forward through those pesky commercials :)</p>
<p>I somehow always end up catching the extenz ads… lol</p>
<p>My kids were just lamenting the same thing, they like to watch a couple of favorite shows online later if they can or just mute the commericials. The ones we find annoying in addition to those are the ones for meds that have so many warnings that they are longer than the part about the drug!</p>
<p>Or longer than the part the drug is for…</p>
<p>I was in Canada this weekend where it is not allowed to mention what the drug is for. So some guy is going on about how Cialis cured him of his weekend antiquing addiction - actually it was very funny and not at all embarassing.</p>
<p>Were you by any chance watching the Phillies- Dodgers game last night? I turned to my husband in about the sixth inning and the 6th ED and prostrate commercial combo and said, who knew you guys had so many problems? </p>
<p>Coincidentally, this article [Pepsi</a> To Cease Advertising | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source](<a href=“The Onion | America's Finest News Source.”>The Onion | America's Finest News Source.) from the onion talks about how there really is no need to advertise. If only the companies would see it this way!</p>
<p>I heard a story on NPR the other day about how these pharmaceutical ads got started. I don’t remember what medication was the first, maybe a sleep aid. They ran the ad expecting to boost sales by … IIRC it was $60m or some such. So it starts running, and pretty soon sales go through that $60m target to hit … let’s say, $100m. Then they went to $300m, $500M, … all the way to $800m (or whatever the eye-popping number was).</p>
<p>The point was, the ad was wildly successful, way beyond the manufacturer’s expectations. And that’s why we’re now seeing so many of them. A very significant percentage of the adult population has requested a physician to prescribe a drug the patient first heard about on TV.</p>
<p>My 7 year old told me I should take Viagra. Me: “Um, why?” She: “Because when you take it, you get to go on a really, really nice vacation!”</p>
<p>tk21769 - I wonder if the ad was for Sominex. “Take Sominex and sleep…” One of the earliest ads I remember seeing about a drug.</p>
<p>I used to hate way back in high school when I’d be watching TV with a mixed group and feminine hygiene ads came on … (Kids are desensitized to it now, I think.)</p>
<p>^^It was not Sominex. Sominex is a non-prescription drug, and those have been advertised to the public more or less forever (e.g. aspirin, Geritol, Doan’s Pills, Pepto-Bismol, etc).</p>
<p>As the NPR piece said, the first <em>presciption</em> drug to be advertised directly to consumers was Seldane, an alergy drug. It opened the flood gates.</p>
<p>Actually it is the volume of the ads that bothers me more than the content. The ads actually hurt my ears and make me run for the remote. Thank heaven for DVR. I wonder if advertisers ever wonder about the adverse reaction to the volume. I might actually let the commercial play if it was at the same volume as the show.</p>
<p>I remember when they first started advertising “feminine hygiene” products, including FDS. (A product with no rational function if ever there was one.) I found it very distasteful, and still do. </p>
<p>I actually boycott products based on offensive ads. For example, I will NEVER buy Charmin.</p>
<p>I know what you mean. We were having dinner the other day and the commercial on tv or radio(I forgot which) mentioned dog poop.</p>
<p>I was just commenting last night how many commercials were for drugs, and how many of these drugs treat formerly unmentionable problems. And of course the worst part is the volume gets turned way up during the commercials.</p>
<p>My then HS junior D and I were sitting on the couch quietly watching Law and Order and surfing the web during the commercial breaks. A really loud and obnoxious ad touting “his and her personal lubricants” attracted D’s attention. “Mom, what’s a personal lubricant?” Before I could even come up with something benign to say, D had already googled the product! “Old people’s sex - ewwww!” I almost fell of the couch laughing hysterically at her reaction! Remember the horny guy in Viagra ads? That really grossed D out!</p>
<p>As much as the ads annoy me (and they do), I have definitely gotten a lot of mileage out of my then-6-year-old’s delighted response to an erectile dysfunction ad last fall. </p>
<p>The voice-over used the abbreviation “ED” and S2 shouted excitedly, “ED! Just like [name of 17 yo S1]!” </p>
<p>Fortunately S1 - who, as anybody on this board might have guessed, was appying ED to his first-choice college - enjoyed this as much as the rest of us did.</p>
<p>my favorite is when the ED ads come on when H and D are bonding over a sports event. D, who is a freshman in high school, turns bright red and H looks at me beseachingly, and I just go about reading my book. It probably shouldn’t strike me as funny.</p>
<p>it’s only going to get bigger </p>
<p>I mean as we boomers get older and have more maladies we’ll be seeing more ads for medicines on the TV</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>I just love the commercials for things with faux-pharmaceutical names like Energizol-3 or Erectozene that gleefully exclaim, “Now available without a prescription!” even though it’s just a vitamin supplement or some ground-up herb.</p>
<p>I am amused by the warnings at the end of the ED drug ads about how you should consult your doctor if the effects last more than 4 hours. It makes me wonder if that’s a common reaction. Yikes.</p>