I'm not sure what I should be more mad about

So, while I was watching Miami Vice tonight (Don Johnson almost got blown up by his girlfriend/snitch/something) and this ad came up for a product called the Pancake Puff.

Since the difficulty of flipping pancakes is far too difficult for some people, some genius somewhere came up with the idea of creating the Pancake Puff. You can make all of the same pancakes that you can make with the normal product as well as fancier type pancakes or even pizza snack pies. I've always wanted pizza snack pies...made from pancake batter. Anyway, you can make seven at one time in the easy-to-clean non-stick surface. I don't actually know how much it costs, but if you want to look that up, the section in orange is for you!

While the program listed off the many possible combination of pancake puffs you can eat such as cinnamon roll pancake puffs and brownie pancake puffs, I began to ask myself an important question: am I more disappointed in the fact that such a device exists or that I was interrupted by such an asinine device?

Seriously. Making pancakes isn't difficult. It's possibly one of the easiest things that anyone can do. Hell, I've made them drunk. It's nowhere near challenging. The hardest part is getting the right consistency on the batter, but that doesn't come with cooking them; consistency is very different from cooking. But, I'll concede that some people could honestly hurt themselves trying to use a stove to make pancakes. That's very possible. Sad, but possible.*

With that said, do you really want seven small little pancake puffs? We're talking like doughnut holes from Dunkin' Donuts in this shit. If I'm going to eat a pancake, I want it to be a pancake and I also don't want to get a unsuspected prize from the inside. The front of my shirt covered in gunk because some person was too lazy to tell me that she had the spare time to, you know, pump some pancake puffs with filling. Additionally, why would I want to eat something like that after seeing the teenage girl in the ad be disappointed by the way that it tastes?

The following is a general attention and critical tip in watching late-night advertising, especially low budget ads and paid advertisements. In watching commercials, it is always good to watch the teenage girl in the advertisement. The boys tend to ham it up too much, show too much teeth in their feigned excitement for the product. The mom and dad have to like it because they are trying to sell the kids on it. Additionally, back to the kids, you have to avoid all kids under the age of like 10. Kids under the age of 10 are too willing to shill for the product. With all of this said, clearly the teenage girl is the most important person to look at in the ad. Because everyone expects them to be angsty, they usually are and that's perfect for measuring the quality of a product.

If she's too happy, it only means one of two things, both of which mean that the product sucks. Such a strong sense of glee means that she's depressed and dying inside or she's attempting bad sarcasm. You know when it's the depression. Her eyes cast away and she seems distant. The bad sarcasm ones are more physically distant by choice, set aside in the ad as if someone, in making these obscenely cheap ads, messed up their set-up. If she's sad, the product sucks. The hard one to read are the middle ones, they are hard to notice but totally worth it.

The girl in between might smirk, flash her eyes wide, or make some other subtle motion that suggests interest but says boredom. These are the ones to read. Sometimes it is difficult, but, at other times like with this ad for the Pancake Puff maker, the ambivalence of the girl was only a shield for her true distaste of the product. Like her face could not have said more how much she hated the product's taste. But, I didn't really blame her; it really did look terrible.

Additionally, the ad said it would be easier to flip the pancake puffs than it would be to flip a regular pancake. I'm going to yell Poppycock! on this one. You have to use this long, thin skewer-type thing to flip the puffs, spin them in their sections, and take them out. How is that easier than using a HUGE spatula and flipping them across the huge surface that is your griddle or skillet? It's totally not.

Nothing in this product's presentation, from the forced actions of the teenage girl to the supposed ease of working these puffs with a long metal skewer, made me want to buy it. Even its bargain basement price makes me not want to buy it. This is clearly a bad product that no one should buy or should have made. This commercial was so bad, I don't even remember what happened in the rest of the program I was originally watching.

*I'd feel bad for you because you hadn't master this most basic of life skills. I like to cook, but I can understand that some people can't do it. Even if you don't like to cook, you have to know how to do some basic things such as cooking eggs and making pancakes just to impress your other in the morning. People love people who can wake them up with breakfast. I know I do. Basic skills don't require you to do more than flip things, operate a butter knife, make measurements with cups that are set to a specific amount, and, at absolute most, read some basic instructions. This isn't challenging. Breakfast should be mandatory learning for all people. That and people learning how to appropriately wash their laundry. There's nothing I hate more than people who walk around in dingy socks. Sorry, neat freak comments. Carry on...