Examples of Idiot Ball in Advertisements.
- One commercial takes the Idiot Ball to truly staggering heights. A Comcast commercial features contestants on a show called You Might Think DirecTV Has More HD But You're Wrong
. The contestants only have to answer a single question - which has more HD, satellite or cable? The host, a voice-over, and the name of the gameshow tells them that "You Might Think DirecTV Has More HD than Comcast But You're Wrong," and yes, they get it wrong. - Infomercials make the actors look like morons. Example: "Too stupid to figure out how to use a blanket? Get a Snuggie!"
- GEICO implies the squick factor and raises the Idiot Ball in one of their commercials where a couple says they're not happy with what they did to save money as sushi is expensive. Their daughter comes in holding an empty fish bowl and looking for her two missing tropical fish. The commercial implies that they processed and ate her fish for sushi in order to save money. Ignoring the fact that even a guppy costs US$3.25 and maybe weighs one ounce, you'd need at least 16 of them to make a pound of sushi. So they're saving money by rendering their kid's fish, notwithstanding that commercial processed fish like surimi in a supermarket is about US$10 a pound, while a pound of sushi made with your kid's tropical fish would cost a minimum of US$52 a pound.
- A commercial for Little Ceasar's Thin Crust Pizza has a couple trying to observe if the pizza crust is indeed very thin, and rather then grabbing a piece of pizza to hold it at eye level, they opt to try and see by squishing their faces down against the table.
- A Skittles commercial has a couple of teenagers talking about one being depressed and he says that he's been diagnosed with Skittles pox—in other words, there are a bunch of Skittles stuck to his skin. His friend pulls one off and eats it, and only after this does it occur to her to ask if Skittles pox is contagious, as she's starting to break out in them, too.
