A rather well-established rule of law is that trade puffing is permissible. Puffing takes two general forms.

The first is a subjective statements of opinion about a product’s quality, using such terms as “best or greatest”. Nearly all advertisements contain some measure of puffery. “You can’t get any closer” (Norelco), “Try something better” (J&B Scotch), “ Gas gives you a better deal” (American Gas Association), “ Live better electrically” (Edison Electric Institution), “State Farm is all you need to know about insurance,” and “Super Shell” are examples. None of these statements has been proved to be true, but neither have been proved false. They all involve some measure of exaggeration.

The second form of puffery is exaggerations extended to the point of outright spoof that is obviously not true. A Green Giant is obviously fictitious, and even if he were real, he wouldn’t be talking the way he does. In the 1927 Ostermoor case, the court pointed to the puffery argument in denying that a mattress company was deceptive in using an illustration appearing to depict that the inner filling of a mattress would expand to 35 inches when in fact it would expand only 3 to 6 inches.

Based on stated definitions and policy, puffing has been narrowed to the point where no deceptive claim can properly be termed puffery