Free
Free
[A shelf holds 3 boxes of cereal. Each box shows a bowl of cereal.] GenCo Ⓞat Cereal StayPuft Oat Cereal RedFarm Oat Cereal (with additional text in a star) Asbestos-free! I hate whatever marketer first realized you could do this.

Asbestos is a fibrous material most commonly known and used for its heat-resistant properties. It was commonly used in housing insulation until its astonishingly destructive effects on human lungs were discovered. The use of asbestos in housing is now banned, but asbestos is still quite common in laboratory hot pads, as well as in concrete industrial buildings where the risk of it getting into the air is minimal.
The comic depicts a common advertising trick taken to an absurd extreme; quite clearly all of the cereal products depicted are asbestos-free, but most have opted not to advertise that fact (if it even occurred to them at all) because it should be obvious. A more realistic example can be found in confectionery products, wherein the term " fat free" might be applied when it's clear that sugar , gelatin , and other ingredients involved in the product are in no way related to, or contain, fat. Note that in some countries, like Germany for example, this practice is actually not allowed, since it counts as "misleading advertising".
While the suggestive implication might be that competitive products do not declare as asbestos free because they cannot truthfully say this, the irony may be that the "asbestos-free" disclaimer could also cause a customer to distrust the product on the grounds of damning by faint praise —if the best thing they can say about a product is that it doesn't contain a toxic building material, do we really want to know what actually is in this stuff?
The claim in the title text—that a rival product has no swine flu —is equally superfluous, as any food product containing disease-causing viruses would be subject to recalls, severe fines, and quite a few people losing their jobs; the fact that the product is actually on a supermarket shelf implies that it already has a stellar reputation for not causing serious illness. [ citation needed ] The use of it here could also be a reference to 574: Swine Flu .
The competing claims, however, sets up the hopefully false risks involved in whether to choose the one with definitely no asbestos (but possibly contains swine flu) or the other that definitely has no swine flu (but may include asbestos).
Misleading advertising is also the subject of the previous comic 624: Branding , and of subsequent comics 870: Advertising and 993: Brand Identity .
[A shelf holds 3 boxes of cereal. Each box shows a bowl of cereal.] GenCo Ⓞat Cereal StayPuft Oat Cereal RedFarm Oat Cereal (with additional text in a star) Asbestos-free! I hate whatever marketer first realized you could do this.
