What's the most mis-advertised thing you've ever seen?

[BanthaFodder]

I got a few movies...

Be Kind Rewind
Advertised As: a whacky comedy featuring Jack Black and Mos Def reenacting a ton of famous movies with Lazer-Cats levels of low-budget hilarity in store.
It Was Really: a dull, unfunny slog of a thing, featuring about 15 minutes of said reenacting (and only Ghostbusters was laugh-out-loud funny) and a really REALLY shitty ending.

Happy Feet
Advertised As: a light-hearted family film about CGI tap-dancing penguins
It Was Really: a film equivalent of a GreenPeace storybook. it wasn't really funny and got flat-out depressing at times, all about how us EEEEEEVIL humans are killing these fucking dancing penguins by eating fish. yes, overfishing is a problem in some places, but if I want to be beaten over the head with environmental lessons in a kids' cartoon I'll watch Captain Planet.

Man Of The Year
Advertised As: a goofy comedy starring Robin Williams as a Stephen Colbert-like comedian who runs for president of the USA as a gag and ends up ACTUALLY becoming the president. hijinks ensue.
It Was Really: a really shitty drama about the company that made the voting machines trying to have this woman ASSASSINATED because she discovered a glitch that ended up winning Robin Williams the presidential election. Robin Williams is a minor character, appearing for a collective 15 minutes of so, despite getting top billing and being on the fucking box. no one else, just Robin Williams' face and name on the box. and he's a minor character... God I LOATHE this film...

and now some movies that were mis-advertised, but still good:

Kick-Ass
Advertised As: a semi-dark comedy with tons of raunchy humor and fun. basically Superbad, but with Superheros.
It Was Really: a totally dark and sometimes just flat-out mean-spirited action flick with some comedy sprinkled throughout. luckily, I was given a heads up beforehand that it would get so dark, so I enjoyed it much more than all the other people who weren't expecting the depressing and unpleasant change of pace.

Inglorious Basterds
Advertised As: a crazy comedy action flick set in an alternate timeline of WWII. wise-ass good guys, comedically incopetant bad guys, and tons of ridiculous violence; something of a mix between a war-time Bugs Bunny Cartoon and Monty Python.
It Was Really: more reserved and dramatic with more diologue and tension than explosions and one-liners. it was funny, but it wasn't JUST a comedy. turned out to be a pretty good film in the end.

Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith
Advertised As: the conclusion to the EPIC STAR WARS SAGA!!! team up with Chewie, Artoo, and *mock scary voice* DARTH VADER!!! get your free Chewbacca toy at Burger King with the purchase of a Kids' Meal, only while supplies last!
It Was Really: a damn EPIC movie. I LOVE how dark it gets in the end. in the original films, the worst thing the Empire does is blow up Alderaan. we don't see the Empire's rise to power, so we just have to kinda take the film's word for it that shit got really really bad. here, we SEE just how bad it got. EVERYTHING goes to shit. EVERYTHING. and it segues PERFECTLY into a New Hope.

 

[TheLaofKazi]

Tobbaco.

 

[twistedmic]

Here's a couple I just thought of.
M. Night Shayamalan's The Village. It was marketed as a scary/monster movie when it was far closer to a dramatic, human nature type of film. It completely sucked as a scary movie, but, in my opinion, worked as a drama/human nature movie.

And, this is an old one, but the 1997 movie 'The Sixth Man' was billed as a fairly happy and light hearted comedy, but I fond it horrifically depressing and crude.

 

[Legendsmith]

There was an ad here in Australia, don't know if the rest of the world got it. It consisted of two children staring at the camera while their eyebrows spasmed wildly to the beat of some techno music.

That's right, it was an ad for Cadbury chocolate. You remembered the ad, so they win.

 

[evilstonermonkey]

There was an ad here in Australia, don't know if the rest of the world got it. It consisted of two children staring at the camera while their eyebrows spasmed wildly to the beat of some techno music.

That's right, it was an ad for Cadbury chocolate. You remembered the ad, so they win.

But I didn't recall who the ad was for, so it couldn't have made me buy more chocolate, let alone cadbury chocolate specifically. In terms of my custom, their advertising money was wasted. Not that the biggest supplier of chocolate to the self-indulgent western world needs to advertise itself effectively.

 

[Saluki_princess]

Hmm... Off the top of my head, some young/adult dark/fantasy novels.

They'll depict the character looking super attractive and cool/sexy on the cover, but when you read the book, you discover that they're actually not like that. Which is a relief, but, why do it in the first place?

Good example: Kitty and the Midnight Hour, by Carrie Vaugn

I think it's because the cover artists don't really read the book, so they're just drawing/painting/whatever a cool, sexy or bad-ass (possibly all three) person for the cover art.
Or it could be that the publisher specifically wants a sexy image on the cover to try and help sell the book.

It's probably the second. Doesn't seem like most people who read the books care about having the same sexy badass on the cover, though, so much as they care that the cover just looks interesting, or that the book was lauded for something... or that Oprah told them to read it.

 

[ICantBelieveItGoesBoom]

The film Kangaroo Jack comes to mind, marketed as a fun family comedy with a talking Kangaroo, ended up as a mediocre, forgettable action movie, turns out the kangaroo talking is just a dream sequence that makes up almost all of the trailer.

A bit of a dissapointment for my 9 year-old self.

 

[SeeIn2D]

Virtually any car ever made by anyone ever. What are you doing with those commercials guys?

 

[gbemery]

What's something that you've seen that was hideously mis-advertised? It can be a game, movie, comic book or toy or whatever.

For me, it was something I saw years back (close to twelve or fourteen years ago). Back when I was still getting Nick Kids Magazine, I repeatedly saw an advert for the anime TriGun, which was marketed as a kid's anime. Whoever made that decision was a complete idiot, or a sadistic bastard.

I still think the prize goes to Pepsi when they had their Pepsi points first come out in the 90's. After collecting so many Pepsi points you could redeem them for different things. They advertised that if you had a million Pepsi points you could have a real Harrier jet and on the commercial they showed it landing. Well they never expected someone to get that many, but some kid did and he sued them for not following through on their advertisement. They had to give him a Harrier but the government ordered it stripped of all flight and weapons etc.

 

[twistedmic]

What's something that you've seen that was hideously mis-advertised? It can be a game, movie, comic book or toy or whatever.

For me, it was something I saw years back (close to twelve or fourteen years ago). Back when I was still getting Nick Kids Magazine, I repeatedly saw an advert for the anime TriGun, which was marketed as a kid's anime. Whoever made that decision was a complete idiot, or a sadistic bastard.

I still think the prize goes to Pepsi when they had their Pepsi points first come out in the 90's. After collecting so many Pepsi points you could redeem them for different things. They advertised that if you had a million Pepsi points you could have a real Harrier jet and on the commercial they showed it landing. Well they never expected someone to get that many, but some kid did and he sued them for not following through on their advertisement. They had to give him a Harrier but the government ordered it stripped of all flight and weapons etc.

Well, technically the jet did land at one point, so the commercial didn't technically lie, unless they said you'd be able to fly it yourself. Though I will admit that it was a dick move of epic proportions to make people think that they could win an operational fighter jet.

 

[mcnally86]

Here's a couple I just thought of.
M. Night Shayamalan's The Village. It was marketed as a scary/monster movie when it was far closer to a dramatic, human nature type of film. It completely sucked as a scary movie, but, in my opinion, worked as a drama/human nature movie.

And, this is an old one, but the 1997 movie 'The Sixth Man' was billed as a fairly happy and light hearted comedy, but I fond it horrifically depressing and crude.

I think the village gets a bad rap. And its a really good movie. Now I think the ending just need tinkering. The big twist was that they live in a game reserve or something and the monsters aren't real right? Well if they put a twist on the twist it would have been an awesome movie. What if the monsters were real after all? I mean sell it that the village elders were using the fake monster to convince people the real monster was out there. I see four ways it could have ended:

1) For talking to the blind girl the monster come out of the woods and eats M. Night S. and the other park rangers.

2) For leaving the village the monster realities by killing about 5 people from the village. Basically the blind girl traded 5 lives for the medicine.

3) Press picks up the story new team tries to get to the village and the pig monster eats them.

4) Leaving the village turned the blind girl into a manbearpig. Like the monsters outside of town are a metaphor for the people in town being cursed so that if they ever left they would mutate. This one fits with the theme of the story. We know the people who settle in the middle of no where payed a price for doing so. But what if the price wasn't just isolation from the word it was manbearpig curse. They did want to keep their children safe if they ventured out. Turning them into unstoppable killing machines would keeps them safe from society.

 

[gbemery]

What's something that you've seen that was hideously mis-advertised? It can be a game, movie, comic book or toy or whatever.

For me, it was something I saw years back (close to twelve or fourteen years ago). Back when I was still getting Nick Kids Magazine, I repeatedly saw an advert for the anime TriGun, which was marketed as a kid's anime. Whoever made that decision was a complete idiot, or a sadistic bastard.

I still think the prize goes to Pepsi when they had their Pepsi points first come out in the 90's. After collecting so many Pepsi points you could redeem them for different things. They advertised that if you had a million Pepsi points you could have a real Harrier jet and on the commercial they showed it landing. Well they never expected someone to get that many, but some kid did and he sued them for not following through on their advertisement. They had to give him a Harrier but the government ordered it stripped of all flight and weapons etc.

Well, technically the jet did land at one point, so the commercial didn't technically lie, unless they said you'd be able to fly it yourself. Though I will admit that it was a dick move of epic proportions to make people think that they could win an operational fighter jet.

Well sure if you want to put a label on things lol. But in the commercial it showed the kid who was redeeming points in the cockpit "landing" it. And if you do want to get technical it didn't land at one point. In fact to be even more technical it was a prop and not an actual Harrier jet. But where they screwed up was in implying things. Showing the jet flying and landing, and then show the kid geting out of the plane saying "sure beats the bus" implying it took him from point A to B. That is still technically false advertisement. Technically making them liable for it. XD

 

[fingerbang143]

The iphone, there most certainly is not an app for that

 

[Dr. wonderful]

A couple of years back, Cheerios used to adverstied that it can lower cholesterol 5%.


...

5% don't mean jack shit, and people refused to take their medicine and ended up dying.

But I have more:

Samurai Champloo: is about a ninja in training: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/arts/television/15hale.html?_r=1

Halo 3 looks like this: http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/bbc-uses-killzone2-vid-for/110735

Raiden was the main badguy in MGS2: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/jun/01/microsoft-xbox

THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE: http://www.dailyworldbuzz.com/tavish-degroot-pictures/6761/

oh and Hugo chavez on video games: "Those games they call 'PlayStation' are poison. Some games teach you to kill. They once put my face on a game, 'you've got to find Chavez to kill him.'"

 

[Cooperblack]

Halo COMBAT EVOLVED.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Brutal Legend. Just ... Brutal Legend.

Wow... thank you.

That bastard fucking demo lied so hard to us...

'Hey! I'm an awesome, metal filled hack'n'slash! Full of cooo setpieces!'

Buy the game... 'HA! I lied ************! I'm actually a sub-par RTS! SUCK IT.'

 

[Aetera]

Wolverine: Origins, speaking as a giant Deadpool fan.

This is what I saw:


Reaction: YES IT'S WADE WILSON THIS WILL BE AWESOME

This is what I got:


Reaction: *utter disbelief, followed by stunned horror, followed by uncontrollable sobbing*

 

[mcnally86]

Virtually any car ever made by anyone ever. What are you doing with those commercials guys?

Seen the one with the voice over done by the guy from Dexter? That's a way to sell cars. Buy this if you murder people on a regular basis seems to be the message there. He even talks about the car in an insane sounding monotone.

 

[WorldFree55]

all of those workout commercials that made it look like you would lose 20 pounds or more for using it.