Comments on: McDonald’s Subliminal Advertising on Iron Chef

By: AJR

AJR — Mon, 09 May 2011 02:34:35 +0000

Subliminal Messages were made illegal after James Viscary’s movie theater study in 1957. At a movie theatre in Fort Lee, New Jersey, two subliminal messages were flashed every 5 seconds, “eat popcorn” and “drink Coco-Cola” These messages only stayed on the screen for 3/1000’s of a second, the messages appeared and disappeared so quickly that they were impossible to detect. Six weeks and 45,000 movie goers later the amount of popcorn and Coke sales were compared to the previous six week period. The results shocked even Vicary. They found that Coke sales had increased by 18.8% and that popcorn sales rose by a staggering 57%. These results are undeniable, Subliminal messages really do work. The public was outraged and scared when these results presented to them. Laws against the use of these messages on Television and especially Television advertising quickly followed.

By: K

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:56:57 +0000

I highly doubt this is a real subliminal message. A real subliminal message will be so fast that no conscious mind can perceive it. This is probably just an accident and is unintentional. But I gotta say, I also highly doubt that subliminal messages are illegal.

By: Raza

Raza — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:14:50 +0000

Really? How can anyone believe this is an “accident”? It’s easy for the network to claim it was, but fact is there’s no way it could have been. If it really was, what commercial is this frame from? I challenge anyone to find an actual commercial that this frame came from. And any such glitch wouldn’t be a 1 frame hop like that with no skip in the audio, and just happened to fall on a mcdonalds frame like this one. Probability that this was an actual accident/glitch is .000000001 The network should be sued/fined heavily for this, becuase not only was it intentional, it almost seems they intentionally wanted it to be noticed. Look at all the free advertisements and publicity coming from it… Iron Chef? Never heard of it until now…

By: Kruz

Kruz — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 08:34:44 +0000

This really happen I saw it on tivo and did the same thing… I called my parents and they saw it too. I have a hard time believing it was one purpose as it was just to blatant.

By: tinyhands

tinyhands — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:05:08 +0000

I think it’s neither a hoax nor true subliminal advertising. It’s too obvious (not to mention illegal, I think). I bet Food Network just left an intern alone in the control room.

By: Schizohedron

Schizohedron — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:20:04 +0000

Is there any chance this is the result of the network switching feeds? Sometimes, on cable news stations, I see a split-second blip of a national ad before a locally sold ad comes on.

I have to say, with McDonald’s establishments and ads so ubiquitous, it seems unlikely they’d need to pull a Max Headroom job.

By: Toby

Toby — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:09:33 +0000

Worst subliminal ad ever!(tm)

Seriously, when this gentleman plays the clip at full speed, the “one frame” of McDonald’s ad that blares bright red and yellow is so obvious there is no way any self-respecting advertiser would do that on purpose. It is jarring, there’s no subtlety. How would any normal viewer not notice?

I call shenanigans on the YouTube guy.