Disney thinks you will pay more for fruit with their logo on it

Buying veggie and fruit combination trays are always more expensive than buying it individually and making your own combination plate. Grocery stores have been selling this convenience to adults for quite a while, but now Disney wants to market it to your kids.

Disney has previously sold fruits with character stickers on the packaging as well as frozen pizza and hamburger patties made in the shape of Mickey Mouse's head.

I really want to know who bought hamburger patties in the shape of a Mickey head. Making Mickey's head out of ground hamburger seems to be the simplest thing anyone could do yourself, ever.

How much more invasive can advertising get?

Ads seem like one of those subliminal things that you don't realize you're being subjected to unless you concentrate on it. If you don't watch TV, though, a major source of advertising is not being delivered to you and if my own experience is any indication, you become much more aware of advertising.

It is indeed everywhere, from your TV to your mailbox to your commute to work to your email when you get there. Ads direct us towards specific products and services, especially those produced under large easily recognizable brand names. Of course, because of the advertising (which is expensive) all of these products naturally have an inflated price compared to their actual worth.

That's a good enough reason for me to focus on small businesses and generic products, but ads are also evolving as technology allows them to be adapted to the individual consumer. The most glaring example of this is the all too common grocery store "club" membership whereby a store (or rather the corporate office) can track the spending habits of local populations, stock their stores accordingly, and direct more specific local ads.

This new VOIP advertising company is a natural extension of that concept. The cost of this phone is subsidized by advertising that is displayed on the computer screen. These ads are directed by a voice recognition program that listens to your conversation, selects key words, and brings up an appropriate ad.

I personally think this new advertising venue will fail, at least initially. Most people will not want their conversations to be tapped. I also think that the marketing company is making some poor assumptions. Since when do you surf the web or do other things while you are in the middle of a telephone conversation? How would this even be applied to cellphones when the screen of the phone will be at the person's ear, not even visible to the caller?

Further, if it does become profitable, is it even worth it to consumers? These ads exist because they work. They influence us to spend more or make uninformed "brand" purchases. That could cost you more than a free phone call.

And more disturbing?

Mr. Maislos said that during tests he noticed that the content had a tendency to determine conversations. “The conversation was actually changing based on what was on the screen,” he said. “Our ability to influence the conversation was remarkable.”

Real-time advertising has the potential to actually influence our conversations. Good for business, not good for us.

At what point should magazines be paying us?

I have decided not to renew my subscription to Parenting Magazine. Though we do not have any kids, I thought it would be a good idea to subscribe for various reasons, one being that we wanted some magazines for weekend morning reading material. Money Magazine was among my initial purchase, but that also will not be renewed. The articles in it are fairly fluffy and although sometimes entertaining, there is far more useful information elsewhere.

Anyway, the reason that I will not be renewing Parenting is that it not only contains very few real parenting tips, but it is almost entirely a mechanism of product advertisement. All magazines have ads, but even the articles in Parenting are usually little more than cleverly disguised product placements. Nearly every "solution" in any article involves the purchase of some commercial product. Even the recipes, which should be fairly inoculous, suspiciously include brand names or processed/frozen goods.

I can ignore the blatant disregard for the male role in parenting in this magazine, and the frequently useless (and rare) male-focused article and the general tone of the entire publication that men do little to nothing in the way of child rearing, making way for "super mom" because as my wife says they are just embracing the stereotype.

I can ignore it because the entire magazine is insulting. When they are not hawking merchandise and "must have" lists that are overflowing with junk that no practical parent could ever possibly need they are filling pages with reader-contributed materials and common-sense tips. Apart from actually putting all the material together, I am at a loss to figure out what content the editors actually produce. I feel violated that I have essentially paid to be advertised to while trying to trick me into believing they are delivering original and useful information.

This magazine, and others like it, should just be made available on the free rack.

Product registration cards

Buy any electronic device and you are likely to find with the warranty card a product registration card. After my wife recently bought a toaster oven she asked me whether she should fill it out and send it in - to make sure she could use its manufacturers warranty if needed.

It is interesting that, either by good placement or how it looks or is worded, people assume they must fill out the product registration card in order to validate their warranty. The top portion does look pretty authentic, asking for the date of purchase, retail store, serial number, model number, name and address and phone number. Then the registration card gets ridiculous, diving right into a survey of what kind of hobbies you enjoy and what magazines you would be most likely to subscribe to.

But if you look closely, somewhere on the card in really fine print (below the other fine print) it says the card has nothing to do with the warranty.

So unless you feel like dishing out your address and phone number so the manufacturer can sell it to a marketing company, throw the product registration card in the trash.

Complain about bad loans, then advertise them

My local paper loves the subprime mess. They love reminding us that people took out horrible loans, ARMS, IOs, and that the resulting foreclosures are affecting the economy overall as well as the housing market. Not a day goes by that we don't get an article about it. At face value, it looks like the paper is doing its best to educate the public about these bad loans and the consequences of buying more house than you can afford.

Yet on their website right below the articles, on EVERY page (literally every page) they post advertisements for - you guessed it - bad loans. They are just random feel-good numbers with links to creepy lending sites asking for your social security number and other personal information with things like: $250,000 loan for $650 month! 4.9% interest rate!

Um, even at 4.9% a $250k loan at $650/mo would be paid off...well...never. A $650 payment would be adding around $250 to the balance of the loan every month. After 30 years you'd end up owing like $400,000.

The sad part is that just about all these news outlet websites have the same ads. Some are text, some have dancing aliens, all are outright lies. Where is the accountability in the advertising department? How can a credible newspaper claim to help educate the public in one hand and simultaneously trick them in the other hand?

The advertising bombardment

Ads are everywhere. They are so pervasive that most of the time we register a product, brand, or message without even paying attention to the ad itself. I am a firm believer that if you want to cut a very large chunk out of your spending, the first thing you should do is stop reading magazines and turn off the TV.

It takes a long time of being unplugged into these consumerism machines before you realize just how insidious they are. Open a magazine and you will likely find more pages of advertising than actual content (remember, you paid them to subject yourself to this). Worse, many of the ads are often disguised as articles. Even some of the genuine articles themselves focus on what products you should buy.

I spent about 2 hours watching television recently, which is more than I've watched in the last 2 months. What struck me most is how very little content is on television anymore. Flip between the channels and you will encounter an advertising bombardment on a mind boggling scale. Liquor ads (that have little to do with liquor and all to do with projecting an image), kids toy ads for electronic gizmos hawked to toddlers as educational, overpriced jewelry on entire channels dedicated to shopping. It's endless. And it's all television is anymore. It's one giant advertisement to get you to spend more of your money. And the shows? Look carefully and you will spot your favorite actor drinking a bottle of Fina or driving a brand new SUV (despite the character being a poor single mom).

Worse, we pay money for more channels of advertising! My opinion? Shut it off.

For more ways to save money, No Credit Needed is hosting a "33 Days and 33 Ways to Save Money" collaboration.

See also: Cable TV gone too far? and Throw out your TV and save.

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