In our years of posting about the retail menace that is Christmas Creep, we have developed a list of situations that are not eligible to be declared Christmas Creep. For example, craft stores know that you’re starting your Christmas crochet projects in mid-August, and Hallmark always introduces its Christmas ornaments in July. Yet Hallmark has taken its ornament collection to CVS, and reader Victoria is not pleased. [More]
Pharma Medicine
CVS Gives Out Free Cigarette Packs Stuffed With Help For Quitting
By 9.5.14
You can’t buy tobacco products anymore at the newly-renamed CVS Health, but you can get the cashier to give you a free pack. While the little red box is shaped like a cigarette pack, that isn’t what’s inside. These packs are available for free, and have coupons and materials inside meant to inspire customers to quit smoking. [More]
What’s The Difference Between All The Many NyQuil Variations?
By 9.4.14 — Updated: 2.24.17
For decades, sick people in search of a night’s rest — and high school kids in search of something to amuse themselves with — took Vicks NyQuil, and eventually woke up, often feeling like they’d hibernated for a season. Then they introduced DayQuil, which takes away all the fun of NyQuil, but supposedly lets you do your job without nodding out mid-meeting. More recently, Vicks added ZzzQuil and the bizarrely named QlearQuil, but what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks are they all about? [More]
Perdue Stops Using Antibiotics In Chicken Hatcheries
By 9.3.14
There’s some good news for a change for those concerned about the rampant use of antibiotics in animal feed. Perdue, the nation’s most well-known chicken producer claims that 95% of its chickens will now be antibiotic-free (sort of) after removing all antibiotics from chicken hatcheries. [More]
CVS Yanks Tobacco Products From Its Shelves A Month Earlier Than Planned
By 9.3.14
Earlier this year, CVS Caremark announced it would stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products in its drugstores across the country by October 1. It’s not October yet, but CVS has decided to pull those items early. As in, today. And it’s got another change in the pipeline, too — its new corporate name is CVS Health. [More]
We Live In A World Where Your Insurer Doesn’t Care That It Charges Two Prices For One Drug
By 8.29.14
In one month, the price of your generic prescription doubles. The first person at your insurance company says “Oops, that’s a mistake,” but a second person tells you that the mistake was actually made when you were charged the original, lower price. Meanwhile, the insurance company’s website tells you that the lower price is the correct one — and none of these people actually seem to give a damn. [More]
Back-To-School Halloween Candy Keeps Kids Healthy And Happy
By 8.25.14
Okay, we get that it’s difficult to swap out seasonal sections in retail stores, and that items sell out when we think it might be too “early” for the next holiday to come along. However, Michael spotted an odd combination of one retail “holiday,” back to school season, and the following holiday, Halloween. [More]
Marketers Think It’s Time To Prepare Your Batches Of Halloween Cards
By 8.21.14
How early is “too early” for a store Halloween display? It used to be that seeing Halloween candy and merchandise on the shelves in July shocked us, but it no longer does. Are retailers wearing us down? Will they begin to stock costumes and pumpkin spice flavored foods even earlier, pairing Fourth of July and Halloween items as Halloween and Christmas are inevitably paired now? [More]
Traveler Arrested At Airport Because Breast Implants Should Not Be Packed With Cocaine
By 8.15.14
Though there are plenty of horror stories out there about people getting crazy or dangerous substances implanted by way of dubious medical procedures, stuffing breast implants with cocaine brings things to a whole new level of nuttery. And as it turns out, it’s not a good way to smuggle drugs, as one traveler recently found out. [More]
The Science Behind Those Never-Melting Ice Cream Sandwiches
By 8.11.14
If you find the idea of ice cream that doesn’t melt after sitting out for hours in 80-degree heat unsettling, you aren’t alone. And because you can’t believe everything you hear on the news, our knowledge-thirsty compatriots at Consumer Reports decided to test out those never-melting ice cream sandwiches for themselves. [More]
Police Arrest Rite Aid Customer Because Shooting Up Heroin At The Pharmacy Isn’t Okay
By 8.6.14
Sure, waiting in line at the pharmacy can feel like a test of one’s patience during what feels like an insufferable amount of time. But while I’m not sure shooting up with heroin while you’re there makes the line go any faster, I do know it’ll get you kicked out of the pharmacy pretty darn quick, no matter how long you’ve been waiting. [More]
Walgreens Pays $5.27B For Remaining Half Of UK Drug Store Chain Boots
By 8.6.14
How much does it cost to buy half of a drug store chain? About $5.27 billion — or at least that’s what Walgreens will pay to acquire the remaining half of British company Alliance Boots, parent company of the Boots chain of retail drug stores.
Contact Lens Makers Work Together To Make Sure You Pay More
By 7.31.14
As anyone with bad eyesight could probably tell you, having options when it comes to the cost of contact lenses is extremely important. Just ask my fiance, because apparently I have “very expensive eyes.” I’ll take that as a compliment, but the idea that I won’t have the opportunity to find the best priced lenses next time I fill my prescription is a very real possibility, and one that’s already hurting some of the 35 million consumers who wear contacts. [More]
Appeals Court Allows Farmers To Keep Feeding Unnecessary Antibiotics To Animals
By 7.24.14
More than 35 years ago, the FDA acknowledged that feeding medically unnecessary antibiotics to farm animals may encourage the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which poses a huge health risk to humans. In 2012, a federal court ruled that the FDA is required by law to hold hearings in which the drug makers would need to prove the safety of non-medical use of these antibiotics. But today, a the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the lower court’s ruling, saying it’s up to the FDA to decide if it wants to hold such hearings. [More]
Even Millionaires Can’t Urinate On The Candy At CVS
By 7.22.14
Even if you’re a wealthy real estate heir who has previously been acquitted of murder charges, you will probably get arrested if you decide to expose your private parts to CVS employees… and then use said private parts to urinate on the store property and products. [More]
FedEx Indicted For Shipping Drugs For Illegal Pharmacies; Denies Allegations
By 7.17.14
More than a year after UPS agreed to pay $40 million to settle federal charges that it knowingly made shipments for illegal online pharmacies, a federal grand jury has indicted FedEx for similar allegations. [More]
Cargill Says It Will Stop Using Antibiotics To Fatten Up Turkeys, But Do They Mean It?
By 7.16.14
Three years ago, Cargill recalled 36 million pounds of Salmonella-tainted ground turkey (followed by a later recall of another 185,000 pounds of the stuff). The particular strain of Salmonella involved in these recalls and the subsequent outbreak that sickened at least 134 people in 36 states, is resistant to antibiotics, likely because of all the drugs put into the turkeys’ feed solely because it has th side-effect of encouraging tissue growth. Yet only now is the agribusiness giant thinking maybe it shouldn’t carelessly shove antibiotics down the throats of the birds it sells to consumers. [More]
Police: Hey, Knuckleheads — The Bathroom Of Chuck E. Cheese’s Is No Place To Be Smoking Heroin
By 7.11.14
Not that there’s anywhere you should be doing illegal drugs, but public places are exceptionally awful venues for such activities And ratcheting up the inappropriate level to 11? Smoking heroin in the bathroom of a Chuck E. Cheese, as police say two “knuckleheads” decided to do in California. [More]
