Ripped: A New Market For Wyeth’s Preparation H
4 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // June 2nd, 2008 // 8:29 am
Going clubbing anytime soon? Want to impress someone with your muscle tone? Then maybe you heard that some guys are spreading the hemorrhoid cream on their chests to look “ripped.” It’s an off-label use that Wyeth Consumer Health disavows. But the trend is likely to ring the register anyway.
At a CVS Pharmacy on New York’s Long Island, manager Lawrence Weisz has noticed a definite shift in the demographic of customers purchasing Preparation H products. “It’s definitely been a lot more younger guys lately,” tells Clublife. “It used to be that people would steal it because they didn’t want to come up to the counter and let everyone know they had hemorrhoids. Now, these young guys come in and they’re very aggressive about it. It’s gotten to the point where I can pick out the guys who are going to buy it when they walk in the door.”
“If you want to get laid, you have to know how to dance,” one clubber tells Clublife. “And if you want girls to dance with you, you have to look ripped. I usually drive down the block so nobody sees me, then I pull over, take my shirt off, rub it everywhere I can reach, then pick up the rest of my boys in my undershirt. It works best if you put it on about an hour before you go in the club.”
And Mitchell Goldner, who manages a nightclub in New York’s Meatpacking District, tells Clublife that slathering Preparation H is “is a totally recession-proof business, like funeral parlors or police departments. These kids today would rather starve than not come to our clubs, and this is certainly reflected in the rising sales of Preparation H on Long Island, in New Jersey and elsewhere.”
Preparation H contains phenylephrine HCL that shrinks swollen hemorrhoid tissues and works by constricting nearby blood vessels feeding blood and fluid to the area. But as ABC News points out, the ingredient doesn’t discriminate what kind of tissue it will shrink, hence the underground tips for applying Preparation H under the eyes, on love handles or other places.
But even if you don’t get lucky using Preparation H, you may feel your heart pound, although love won’t be the cause. “Probably if you put enough of it on, it would raise your blood pressure,” Darrell Rigel, clinical professor of dermatology at New York University Medical Center, tells ABC. “It’s not designed to cover the whole area of your chest. It’s designed to cover a small part of your rear end.”
Bill
This was all predicted in the book “Naked Lunch.”
Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his a**hole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down, you dig, farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard. This “a**-talk” had a sort of gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you hafta do is “turn loose”? Well, this talking hit you right down there. A bubbly, thick, stagnant sound. A sound you could smell.
This man worked for a carnival, you dig, and to start with, it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called “The Better Oh”, that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it, but it was clever, like, “Oh, I say, are you still down there, old thing? ‘Nah, I had to go relieve myself!’”
After a while, the a** started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his a** would ad-lib, and toss the gags back at him every time. Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy incurving hooks, and started eating. He thought this was cute at first, and built an act around it. But the a**hole would eat its way through his pants, and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags, nobody loved it, an’- and wanted.. and it wanted to be kissed, same as any other mouth. Finally, it talked all the time, day and night. You could hear him for blocks, screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it. But nothing did any good, and the a**hole said to him, “It’s you who will shut up in the end, not me. Because, we don’t need you around here any more. I can talk, and eat, AND sh_t”.
matt
Sounds a$$holes using ot on their chest instead of their a$$holes.
HorusCat
This is a riot! Does Prep H have an odor? Do their fingers get all wrinkly from rubbing it on their chests? Do people really think it will shrink their love handles? Under their eyes? Human creativity knows no bounds, apparently.
James
That explains why my ecstasy dealer started selling Tucks Pads, too.
I also saw some yellow glo-sticks with Prep H emblazoned on them. And 50 Cent was in one of their ads last week. I think Wyeth is going to get a warning letter.