Car Ads

I am often ticked off by ads on TV -- the U.S. is the only country in the world that allows ads for prescription drugs, and misleading claims about food are commonplace, ads for casinos say everyone is a winner.  However the ads that really puzzle me are car and truck ads.  Do people really do impulse buying on $30-40,000 vehicles?

The ads make it sound like people should go car shopping for fun.  They show people skipping work to visit a showroom.  They show whole families dropping in like its a visit to Disneyland.  Hey kids, let's go get ice cream and buy a $50,000 truck!

Really?

This has become so ubiquitous that it might not even seem bizarre anymore.  But it is bizarre and unsettling.

Don't get me started on the "cash back" scam.

I have the same problem with TV advertising. Except for very rare occasions, I do not watch live TV, but either download the programs or record them on the DVR and skip through the ads. If I was forced to sit through ads in order to watch TV, I would just unhook the satellite and use the TV only as a monitor for DVDs.

I will confess that I once saw a TV ad for a 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse and thought it was really cute and went down and bought one. I hadn't even been in the market for another car. But that was twenty years ago, and the car was only about $25K.