18 Awful Ads By Surprising Companies

Effective advertising is pretty straightforward. Explain why and how your product solves a problem, creates value in a person's life, or makes them feel good via tasting good, looking good, or addressing a physical need. Or just make it so owning it or using it makes people want to have sex with you, that usually works, too. It's not too difficult.

However, some ad geniuses try to make it difficult with wacky ideas like making TV dinners aggressively manly, that fast food burgers are worth killing others in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, how that eating their hard candy was like prison rape, or explaining how buying this specific floor cleaner can prevent pedophiliac sexual assault. None of what you just read was made up, these ads actually happened.

Here are those ads and other ones that went out of their way to stupidly promote their products the most ridiculous, offensive, or ridiculously-offensive ways possible.