Colgate's TV ad shaved sandpaper — the Supreme Court said the demo was a lie

Rapid-Shave's television commercial claimed the cream could shave sandpaper: apply, soak, and off in a stroke — with the camera apparently showing exactly that. In reality the 'sandpaper' was a plexiglass sheet covered with sand. Real sandpaper took about eighty minutes of soaking to shave, and on 1960s cameras it looked like blank colored paper anyway. The FTC charged Colgate-Palmolive and issued a cease-and-desist order.

The Seventh Circuit softened the order: if the claim itself was true, it reasoned, a mock-up was just a technique. The Supreme Court reversed in April 1965. Presenting an undisclosed simulation as a real test, the Court held, is a material deception in itself — the viewer is told they are seeing proof with their own eyes, and the fake demonstration misrepresents what they are watching, whatever the product can actually do.

Colgate-Palmolive set the rule every product demonstration still runs under: show the real test, or disclose that it is a simulation. Fifty years later the same logic governs lab scenes, before-and-afters and crash tests — the demonstration is the claim.