Interesting E-mail

So I got an email from amazon.com yesterday...


I open it, and I see that it is an ad from their Health and Personal Care department. The border of the email is light purple, and the text is written in teal. So I assume they are trying to push some new beauty product or weight loss program designed to help me lose weight - like I need that.

So I scroll down, and what do I see?


Dear Amazon.com Customer,


Since you have purchased extreme sports gear or beef snacks in the past, we thought you might like to know that Slim Jim, Original, Case of 12 15-Ounce Canisters is now available for ordering. Order yours by following the link below.


Okay, I'm sorry. What did I miss here? Amazon's Health and Personal Care department is recommending that I try Slim Jims?!? Why? So I'll be in need of their other products to nurse me back to full health after eating AN ENTIRE CASE OF SLIM JIMS?

And I'm sorry, but I don't believe I have ever purchased extreme sports gear or beef snacks from amazon.com. I prefer to purchase my cliff diving nose plugs and my cow testicles from more local establishments, thank you very much.

Of course, we can't forget the product description.


Product Description:
Slim Jim, the number one brand of meat sticks, is a convenient, one-of-a-kind snack with the intense flavor and snap that people love. It’s a unique combination of spice and attitude, made from beef and real smoke flavoring.

I took the liberty to mark with bold, and in one place of heightened dictional emergency - italics, words or phrases which cause an English major great distress and alarm that something like this actually gets passed off as acceptable advertisement material, or acceptable writing in general.

Let me explain why.


1. "Meat sticks". When a product like dried beef inherently defies a more dignified name, is this really the best they can do to market the product? "Here, try this. It's brown, we got it from a cow, and it's in the shape of a stick. What's that? Oh, yeah, I think there's meat in there, somewhere."


2. "Snap". People love it when their food snaps at them? Do meat sticks snap?

I did some more research on this, and found an excerpt from a product description of the Hot Beef and Cheese Slim Jims: "A "Snap" moment occurs when you reach a physical or personal milestone, even if you don't know if you can do it."

Gee, what better product to keep at your side in order to reach your physical and personal milestones than the incredible meat stick.

Disclaimer: Meat sticks' meat content may exceed fat content. Proceed at your own risk.


3. "Attitude". I'd imagine that it would have to be essential for an obviously poorly marketed product to have some sort of moxie or attitude to avoid the ever-looming depression I'm sure meat sticks everywhere are faced with. "If only I had tried a little harder, maybe I could have been a steak" is a sentence which I'm sure is heard reverberating around the Slim Jim Play-Doh Extruder Factory. (Hey, how else do you think they make them into those little tube-stick shapes, anyhow?)


4. "...made from beef and real smoke flavoring."

WOW! It's made from the real smoke flavoring? That's amazing! If that's the case, where are the "Slim Jim Real Smoke Flavoring Sticks?"


Anyway, here's to your health...