Static Cling

The object of the game is to invent a "problem" that does not exist, market a "solution" which is absolutely free to make, and achieve infinite profit. If a product costs nothing to produce, and everyone buys it, your return over cost is a positive number divided by zero, which is infinity.

Here are the rules:

The problem must be totally imaginary. Curing cancer, feeding the poor, or getting public pay phones to accept incoming calls again don't qualify.
The solution must be marketable, preferably to that category of the public not trained in critical thinking.
The solution must be as imaginary as the problem.
The solution must be as easy as printing a label on a box claiming the box contains the solution to the problem.
Being imaginary, there is no way to tell if the problem has been solved, so marketing must lead users to filter the results on behalf of the solution.
Extra points if you can patent the solution, so other vultures can't share your carrion.

The game is over when infinite profit is achieved, or the public wises up. Don't hold your breath. --PhlIp

OK, so static cling is an imaginary problem. But why has nobody ever used it as the name of a rock band? --GlennVanderburg

Sorry, but static cling is not imaginary, where did that idea come from anyway?

Running your dryer too long causes static cling! Take the clothes out slightly damp - problem solved!

Static can make clothes cling. The idea that this is a problem is imaginary. Who cares if your clothes cling? Why waste money stopping them?

It is a problem because it makes clothes very uncomfortable to wear, and applies equally to men and women. Newer fabricated materials like polyester have problems with static, and it's well worth the price of dryer sheets to get rid of it.

[I used to have a shirt that was prone to this, and it was uncomfortable; reach to get something, and the shirt resettled in an odd twisted position and then stuck that way like glue. But in any case, the market niche is primarily women, with whom static cling can be more than annoying -- e.g. a skirt that sticks immodestly high on the body, or similarly with a slip, causing weird bulges, etc etc. Everyone raise your hand if you're an expert on the problems women have with clothes and what's the best way to solve them...what? Only men were bitching that the problem is imaginary? Huh.]

How did women survive for thousands of years their skirts stuck immodetly high on their bodies?

Materials susceptable to static cling (polyester, nylon--see below) are recent inventions. At any rate, StaticCling is only an issue in those societies where basic survival is largely taken for granted; women 200 years ago (let alone thousands) and women in poor countries frequently have more important things to worry about than fashion. (It could be argued that even in the West, people have more important things to worry about than fashion issues; but that's another matter altogether).

StaticCling is caused by running your dryer after clothes are dry. Tune your hygrometer correctly and the problem goes away. You save money, and reduce societal pressures causing the OilWar?.

[Perhaps "split ends" is a better analogy. People probably never noticed them until they were advertised as a "big" problem. It became a self-fulfilling problem.]

A few years back, Pacific Bell (and possibly other phone companies) tried to convince consumers that answering machines were horribly unreliable, and should be discarded in favor of a $7/month voicemail service. (Which proved to be rather unreliable.)

Voicemail does have some advantages; mainly that you can use it simultaneously with your phone, and it works if you leave the phone off the hook. Whether that is worth $7/month is debatable.

The beer company Keystone has been running this "bitter beer face" campaign for the past few years. It shows a drinker enjoying a beer when all of a sudden, the dreaded bitter beer face strikes and the guy's face shrivels up violently. The solution? Drink Keystone! It's smooooth. And probably flavorless.

The more bitter the beer the better

Have you seen these Visa card commercials? A person goes into a shop and tries to buy something with a check. Clerk either asks for ID, which the shopper doesn't have/can't produce, or makes ridiculous demands for other documentation. The message: Checks are such a hassle! Use your Visa check card!

Who carries a checkbook and no identification?? Also, stores don't always require ID for a check, and they never require birth certificates, oaths or affirmations.

Bottled water gets my vote. --AndyPierce

Have you tasted the city water supply in San Diego County ???

The bigger joke is that some of the bottled water is nothing more than tap water.

If it's water from anywhere in Southern California, eww... OTOH, PortlandOregon has some of the best-tasting tapwater anywhere.

[Are you talking about taste, or some unseen substances?]

Smaller water molecule clusters, greater health benefits!

Dehydrated water was an important feature of Space Quest. It was quoted as being 'slightly horrible'.

Today it's tooth-whitening products. You've all seen the commercial. Girl smiles at guy. Guy smiles with DARK YELLOW TEETH. "This is what you might as well look like if you don't use our extra-brightening toothpaste." For the product to be extra-effective, the marketing should play in your head whenever you talk to a member of the opposite sex, and make you think you can never attract a mate until you buy the product. Ironically, at least two sitcoms have used "stupid tooth whitening product makes your teeth TOO WHITE!" as a major plot point. See BreathAzure?.

Colored contact lenses. Because looking like a Fremen is preferable to having brown eyes.

Still using mustard AND mayonnaise? Are you still a TWO-JAR SLAVE? Try new Mayostard. This was originally a joke on MrShow, but I've seen them selling peanut butter and jelly in a single jar. Yeah, but Goober Grape (a Smuckers product which consists of peanut butter and grape jelly in a jar, the jar being filled so that there are alternating stripes of PB and J around the rim) has been around for a lot longer than MrShow. (And don't forget that Dijonnaise is an actual product. http://www.hellmanns.ca/06_pantry/main_dijon.htm)

Is your woman disapointed? Try "mental viagra" for just $29.95 per month. Buy an eleven month supply and get the 12th month absolutely free.

Sick of "can't open db for update"? Learn secret "cheat port numbers" that bypass all locks. For the complete list send us your Windows-XP passport file and your mother's maiden name.

The audiophile and home computer markets have produced dozens of these ... here are some of my personal favorites:

Monster Cable: Get "Time Correct Technology", a "Magnetic Flux Tube", and "Microfibers" for YOUR audio system. Here's a reference for those who think they can hear a difference (http://www.passlabs.com/downloads/articles/spkrcabl.pdf).
Oxygen-Free Copper: Oooooh, watch out for the dreaded oxygen in your copper. Right.

For the record, this one isn't entirely gibberish. The oxygen content in copper makes a huge difference in conductivity... up to a 5-10% difference between 'normal' copper and deoxygenated copper. Of course, if that copper is being used to carry digital signals, it makes not one whit of difference; but if it's for analog, I wouldn't be surprised to find a real distinction. (For the record, I'm not an audiophile, so i'm not sure how well this applies to audio equipment; my experience with deoxygenated copper was in a physics lab setting, where the difference made or broke the experiment.

Oxygenated water, on the other hand... --AdamBerger

Also, TravellingWaveTubes use Oxygen-Free High-Conductivity copper because the purer copper is far less likely to leak. A vacuum tube that leaks... well, let's just say it doesn't have a good vacuum.

CD STOP LIGHT, CD Backlight, etc: Cover the edge of your cd's with special patented green ink, applied with a special patented green ink marker. Also paint the inner circle. Here's a testimonial: "The sound? There's less harsh treble, more smooth sound, more open sound, more dynamics, more contrast, better tonation - al in al a great way to improve on the poor sound quality offered from CD-players in general. But there's a limit to the improvements - it is not enough to get optimum sound quality (Would also be too good to be true!). Thus an overall rating of 4*." Oh boy. I wonder if it works on DVD's too?
Surge Protectors: How many of you have one? What do you think it protects your equipment from? Why do you believe it works (besides the informative packaging)? What do you think distinguishes the $7.00 Walgreen version from the $99.99 CompUSA model? (http://www.howstuffworks.com/surge-protector1.htm).

Sorry, but my UPS has a surge protector built in for an external phone line. Lightning struck nearby and the modem stopped working. Inspection showed that most of the diodes in the surge protector had burned up, but after diode replacement the modem worked perfectly. Surge protectors can work. On another note, there is usually a huge difference in ability between the $7 one and the $100 one, although that's not guaranteed by the price difference. -- PeterHansen

The heavier the load a surge protector can take and the faster it responds to a surge the better it is. Some also include a line conditioner to help take out the extra noise and jacks to protect your modem. It's fairly true: the el cheapo surge protectors aren't worth the money. Find a better one and the money should be worth it --but if you can, get a UPS.

Monitor cleaning kit/Floppy drive cleaning kit/Mouse cleaning kit/CD cleaning kit/DVD cleaning kit

You're right - the audiophile market is there already:

Gold plated mains plugs So the 60Hz (AmericanCulturalAssumption) hum will be heard in the audio undistorted, I suppose?
Gold plated main fuses. I know one shop that will visit your home to check that the fuses are correctly aligned. If they are the wrong way round they can do terrible things to the sound.

I knew someone who listened to three different digital connection cables between his CD player and his preamp and picked the best sounding of them!

''I don't personally claim to be able to hear a difference, but there is a reason why a crummy digital audio cable could produce impaired output, even without bit corruption: jitter. http://www.scalatech.co.uk/papers/aes93.pdf

Most jitter is caused by the source device, not introduced by the cable.

Even if the product does not cost anything to produce, it would cost a fortune to market such a product. Since a product which is not wanted has to be pushed hard. -- VhIndukumar

Hmm, let's see now. None of my clothes exhibit static cling, but that's because they are all made from leather, cotton, linen or wool, and they are all always hung out to dry naturally. Plus, I never actually wash the leathers, just rub the road grime off them from time to time. Not only do I not use any anti-static type laundry products, I don't even use specialist laundry detergents (don't like those optical brighteners, or the sickly fragrance, or the phosphates, or...) just industrial liquid soap. Works a treat. So I'd be a sucker to buy any cling-be-gone stuff, certainly.

But didn't these anti-static products first appear back when it was the latest thing to have all your clothes made out of nylon, polyester etc and to dry them in a tumble-drier? And if one were in the position of doing a large family's laundry week in, week out, wouldn't a product that made each laundry episode just a little easier soon be worth just a little bit of money? Just a thought.

Ironing water. Just go door-to-door with some special water (tap water with food coloring in it) made specifically for steam irons.

The problem with tap water is that the minerals in the water build up rusty deposits inside the iron. Then the next time you use the steam function on your iron it spews all this gunk on your shirt and makes your slacks look like they got poo stains. Although tap water with food coloring is a very brilliant idea, it would make the residual gunk even more colorful.
- That's why we always use distilled water in our clothes irons and automobile batteries.

Thanks to everyone who contributed for reminding me why I GaveUpOnAdvertising.