A Lesson in False Advertising

I don't know who needs to hear this, but when you promise one thing and deliver the exact opposite, people get pissed.

News headlines, as you guys well know, can get downright depressing. I scan them several times a day, looking for something I feel I can offer some thoughtful, humorous commentary on. Yesterday, I came across this doozy from People magazine:

I didn’t think it was something I’d be covering for Jenna’s Side necessarily, but Willy Wonka held a special place in my childhood heart, so I was intrigued. Our relationship began in the 1970s, when a good TV movie was by far the highlight of any otherwise mundane week. (This was back when engaged parenting meant a mostly sober, “Here’s a stick. Go outside and play with it.” Entitled, we were not.)

Each Saturday I’d anxiously await the arrival of the TV Guide—an actual, physical magazine you subscribed to by mail and read by the light of your trusty oil lamp—to see what small screen wonders the next several days had in store on any of the three-to-occasionally-four channels available to us. If Willy Wonka or The Wizard of Oz or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was on the lineup, birthday-level excitement ensued.

Seeing the above headline—and having been mildly traumatized by Wonka’s defensible but still ruthless battering of those bratty kids—I assumed the live, interactive exhibit had been a little too true-to-cinematic-life for some modern-day trophy parents’ liking. I pictured spoiled, sassy ankle-biters being kicked down garbage chutes or shoved into raging chocolate rivers or at least being blasted in the face with a paintball gun.

The official Willy’s Chocolate Experience website certainly doesn’t look menacing. It’s festive and psychedelic and seems like a not-terrible way to spend a few hours and $44 *per person, chocolate not included.

“Embark on a journey filled with wondrous creations and enchanting surprises at every turn,” the web copy entices. “Encounter mind-expanding projections, optical marvels, and exhibits that transport you into the realm of creativity. This space invites you on a surreal journey where the boundaries between reality and fantasy harmoniously merge…” I mean, forty-four bucks for an acid trip without the mental and psychological side-effects or possible jail time? Sign me up!

Of course I wondered… what could possibly have gone so gruesomely, tearfully, law-breakingly wrong?

It turned out, the “nightmare” Willy Wonka Experience—the one that “left children in tears and prompted families to call the police”—was merely a pathetic, low-budget, not-at-all-wondrous-or-enchanting “epic let down” (The Hollywood Reporter) that at least one person compared to a meth lab.

I’ve never seen an actual meth lab, so you be the judge.

Personally, I’d imagine a meth lab would have lots more tables, maybe some beakers or hoses and probably a really nasty toilet or something but again, not an expert.

Spoiler: Minds did not expand. The boundaries between reality and fantasy didn’t even jiggle. Not a single guest was transported into a realm even in the same galaxy as creativity. The seeds of lifetime trauma were planted.

Obviously, the marketing copy was a tiny bit misleading. But in the WCE’s defense, how many folks would have bought tickets if they’d seen these photos and been invited to “step into a sad, barely decorated warehouse where we’ve made literally zero effort to hang cheap, undersized sheets on the walls and where you might see an actual card table, some plastic mushrooms, and even a fake lollipop or two! You’ll leave only slightly more depressed than when you arrived, but with ‘two jelly babies and a 1/4 of a can of limeade each,’ *maybe and while supplies last.”

Actually, sort of meth lab-y maybe?

Come with me… and you’ll be… in a world of pure imagination. (You’re imagining this is a magical chocolate factory, right?)

The funniest thing about this flagrant bit of false advertising is that it made international news. Literally every outlet from Rolling Stone and USA Today to TMZ and CNN—even The snooty-yet-woke New York Times and now me, dammit—rushed to cover it.

The Wonka debacle is newsworthy, you see, not because it was the brainchild of a company that calls itself House of Illuminati (I’m starting to think we really are living in a simulation, BTW), but because you can’t just go promising people a nine-course caviar and white truffle dinner and then serve them a turd sandwich and think you can get away with it. Not with the intrepid journalists of the world watching! There are rules against things like that. It’s unfair. It’s illegal! It’s morally and ethically wrong.

Am I the only one who feels like I’m being pistol-whipped with the irony stick right now?

“Safe-and-effective.” “You won’t get COVID if you’re vaccinated.” “We know that the virus stops with every vaccinated person.” “The COVID vaccines do not affect fertility.” “Side-effects are rare and mild.” “The unvaccinated are looking at a winter of severe illness and death.” “You still need a vaccine, even if you have natural immunity.”

That’s not a bunch of exaggerated, overly jazzed up ad copy; those are audacious, outright lies. Millions of people were gravely injured or died for believing them. That’s not speculation; it’s fact.

*Pfizer’s actual response to vaccine injury

Where’s the media outrage? Where are interviews with disappointed customers? Where is this headline:

‘Nightmare’ Vaccine Experience Leaves Children and Adults in Agony—or Dead—and Prompts Families to Call Their Attorneys

“Safe-and-Effective” vaccine was described as “necessary” and promised to “create lasting immunity” for recipients

It’s called irony, FYI.

I don’t know why I keep beating this poor, lifeless horse. The media as we once knew it is long dead and well and deeply buried. (See “Gunshot Victims left waiting as horse dewormer overdoses overwhelm Oklahoma hospitals” for eulogy details.) I guess the best we can expect from the press anymore are hyperbolic headlines blasting underwhelming carnival attractions—if we’re lucky.

Democracy dies in darkness, people. THANK GOD the AP is shining its blinding light.

P.S. Sincere thanks to all for the well-wishes and supplement suggestions while I battled this week’s miserable bug. It was a nasty one but unfortunately for the cartel, this conspiracy theorist is still kicking.