The human equivalent of a chemical oxidation - reduction reaction.

A retail practice or form of prestidigitation in which the customer is deluded into not-thinking that he is getting a bargain. Often attended, in cartoons at least, by people in unusual, often paisley-bedecked clothes with ferocious manners and voracious consumer appetites. A kind of conditioning used to catalyze a consumer society which will eventually no longer be necessary.