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| Active Ingredients Only |
 Title text: Contains the active ingredients from all competing cold medicines, plus the medicines for headaches, arthritis, insomnia, indigestion, and more, because who wants THOSE things? |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a GUY - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. |
This comic is a reference to how all medicine typically has one (or a few) "Active" ingredient and many "Inactive" ingredients. This is played against the current trend of advertising food as containing "no additives and no preservatives".
Randall thus presents a pack of cold medicine that jokingly has "Active Ingredients Only", which is the name of the brand as can be seen since it has "™" after the name. It has six active ingredients and no inactive ingredients. All this because We're not here to waste your time, their slogan, which is also trademarked. Interestingly, the slogan is a registered trademark while the product name is a common law trademark. This means that the slogan likely stays the same, while the product name changes from time to time.
Since one of the inactive ingredients in any medicine in tablet form would be binders that keep the tablet together, and keep the active ingredient(s) inside, it could be a serious problem to take this cold medicine. Though this packaging is commonly blister packs, with each dose contained seperatly. Opening the box would reveal a mix of various colored powders and no way to ensure you are correctly taking the right dose. In fact, it would be extremely easy to overdose yourself on one or more of the active ingredients. Or to put it in another way, just like additives and preservatives have a real, beneficial purpose in food production, so do the inactive ingredients in medicine.
The title text says that it contains the active ingredients from all competing cold medicines, as well as almost every other medicine on the market for headaches, arthritis, insomnia, indigestion and more. Some of these other conditions, but not all, often occur when you have a cold. This is in line with the "don't waste your time" slogan, since you then need to use only one cold medicine. This may be be a follow-up (or a wish from Randall) after 1618: Cold Medicine, where Cueball wishes to try all possible types of cold medicine at once. Note that, with this list, there should be more than those six active ingredients in the medicine than only those listed on the pack.
It correctly states that, apart from the cold you are trying to get rid of, you also do not want these "other things". But it is not advisable to take too much medicine, and often you are warned not to mix different types at the same time, or at least should ask your doctor first. This cold medicine violates these rules, which is the main joke.
Another joke is that taking any cold medicine has no effect on the cold itself, but instead treats some of the symptoms. So if you are going to go through all types of cold medicine to no avail anyway, you might as well get it over with by taking them all at once, saving some time.
Transcript
- [A picture of a pack of cold medicine. At the top there is a large advert in three lines. In a black line, to the right of the advert, white text states what kind of medicine is in the pack. Below to the left is a square frame listing ingredients. Most of the text inside this frame is unreadable scribbles. To the right of the frame is another advert inside a black frame. On the side of the box are also unreadable scribbles, both at the top and down next to the ingredients list. At the bottom of the box it can be seen how the pack can open up.]
- Active Ingredients
- OnlyTM
- We're not here to waste your time®
- Cold Medicine
- Active ingredients
- [Six lines of scribbles, with first a name, then a statement in brackets and finally a column right of this with a short line of scribbles.]
- Inactive ingredients
- None
- No binders!
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