You Bet Your Sweet Aspercreme: Shoddy Goods 098

Most issues of Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about consumer culture, unearth the story behind some historic shard of commerce weirdness. Alas, this time (spoiler), an advertising masterpiece refused to give up its secrets. I’m your host, Jason Toon. Walk with me, won’t you?

Did I hear that right? It was 2005. I was watching Jeopardy! The game had just ended with the Final Jeopardy reveal. As Alex and the contestants started their postgame small talk, Johnny Gilbert intoned “Promotional consideration provided by…” to introduce those frantic little mini-commercials they cram in before the closing credits.

So far, so normal. My attention drifted… what should we make for dinner?… until a cheerful male chorus belted out what sounded like “You bet your sweet Aspercreme.” Now they had my attention. At the end of the 15-second spot, there it was again. They were definitely singing “You bet your sweet Aspercreme”, with the slogan shown on the screen for good measure. I thought it was hilarious myself, and a little daring, even by the sleazy standards of 2000s pop culture.

Speaking truth to pain

But then, maybe a week later, the otherwise identical spot had the same jolly fellows singing the far lamer slogan “You bet if it’s Aspercreme.” The commercial’s short run, and the absurd juxtaposition of a pain-relief patch playing with naughty words in their commercials, would give rise to a second life on the Internet, both as a catchphrase and as a dimly remembered Mandela effect candidate. I’m here to tell you it was real. Unfortunately, that’s all I can tell you.

Maximum strength

The ad itself is mostly a forgettable example of a stock-standard medicinal commercial: aching body parts, pulsing animated waves of relief, and regular folks enjoying a newly pain-free life. A typical 2000s announcer feeds us a line about how the Aspercreme Back & Body Patch is “the first and only maximum-strength patch with concentrated relief to knock out the pain.”

The generic vibe, and the inherent mundanity of the product itself, is what makes the childish joke of the slogan hit so hard. It just wouldn’t be as funny in a zany commercial for some wacky product. It’s not a work of genius because of the dumb pun so much as making this dumb pun in this square, tepid context.

Adding to the incongruous impact is its placement crammed in that cluster of 15-second spots right before the closing credits. It’s a no-man’s-land that no man ever pays attention to, one final nakedly desperate grab for your attention. It’s the last place you’d expect any surprise or cleverness. What’s remarkable is that anyone bothered to try. It’s the same dynamic that would be exploited by the inert headache placebo Head On for viral fame a year later.

Sure, apply it wherever, can’t hurt (or help)

And then it was gone. Although “ass” was already commonplace on prime-time TV, this winking almost-curse was a step too far for somebody. But who?

“I thought I was going insane”

Did viewers complain? Did the game show producers get cold feet? Did some executive at Chattem, Inc., which owned Aspercreme, get embarrassed when a golf buddy ribbed him about it?

I have no idea. I’ve gotten reasonably good at tracking down stories behind things like this, of following threads of evidence through various sources. But unlike other ‘00s icons of left-field advertising like the well-documented Spongmonkeys for Quizno’s, “You bet your sweet Aspercreme” got no media coverage that I can find. No announcement of the campaign’s launch or the decision to pull it. No news stories about a consumer uproar or FCC warning.

I reached out to a copywriter who worked on Aspercreme; this campaign was before his time. I contacted a creative agency I found mentioned in association with Aspercreme during the 2000s. They never responded. If by any chance you worked on this campaign or know someone who did, email me, please!

The memory-holing of this short-lived tagline was so total, its very existence fell into dispute. Blogger Katie A. O’Reilly wrote in 2014: “For years, I have been convinced that I once heard an ad for a product whose tagline ran ‘You bet your sweet Aspercreme.’ I only heard it once, but I loved it. I told my brothers about it, but the ad was so quickly updated with a new tagline, neither of them ever saw it, and believed I was making it up.”

The Ministry of Truth must have missed the May 22, 2005 edition of the Tacoma News-Tribune

Way back in 2007, an Ain’t It Cool commenter named exofficersmith said “I saw them twice and then never again, and thought I was going insane.” More recently, Threads user caroline.gadbury pleaded “Please tell me someone saw the Aspercreme commercial ‘You bet your sweet ASSpercreme!’” Only when the commercial resurfaced on YouTube was the debate put to rest.

But among those who did remember, “You bet your sweet Aspercreme” found a new life as a catchphrase. It’s been dropped in discussions of everything from Hulk Hogan to the card game UNO to the relative merits of bullet types to, of course, advertising taglines that take up permanent residence in your brain. An Indiana theme-park owner quoted it as her favorite ad slogan in the August 2016 issue of Amusement Today magazine. And YA fantasy writer Anna Banks had one of her characters say it in the mermaid romance novel Of Triton.

Even Aspercreme, under their new owners Sanofi, has softened their stance. In 2021, they debuted their “Kick pain in the Aspercreme“ campaign. It just goes to prove that you can suppress it, you can doubt it, you can try to bury it, but you can’t keep a bad pun down.

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What weird ads from your childhood are locked in your head forever? “588-2 three-hundred, Empire!” is a jingle I’ll never forget, though until I just looked I had no idea they sold carpeting. Got any favorites, good or terrible? Let’s hear ‘em in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat.

—Dave (and the rest of Meh)

Get your Aspercreme in gear and apply these previous Shoddy Goods stories directly to the forehead:

• Schlitz is disappearing, but these classic Schlitz ads never go flat
• When water guns looked a little too real
• One former Gap employee’s quest to collect all their instore playlists

And if you like Shoddy Goods, don’t miss Jason’s new other newsletter, Gnomenclature. Every week he digs into the 178-year-history of Hammacher Schlemmer, America’s oddest retailer. It’s gonna get weird!