Luster Is Off Armor All TV Commercial : Consumers: Watchdog group says claims about Protectant’s superiority were misleading. The firm disputes that contention.

Armor All Products Corp., maker of the nation’s best-selling automotive vinyl and rubber protectant, used a misleading television commercial to favorably compare its product to the competition, an industry watchdog group said Thursday.

The ad in question is no longer being aired. The Better Business Bureau National Advertising Division said Armor All withdrew it in response to the group’s criticism, but Armor All disputes that claim.

“The advertisement has already run its full schedule” and will be replaced with a new promotion, said Melanie Day, a spokeswoman for the Orange County company.

The comparison ad, in which Armor All Protectant is shown to outperform its leading competitor in protecting automobile vinyl against fading and discoloration when exposed to strong sunlight, was based on flawed testing practices and depicted a result that “was an overstatement,” according to an NAD report.

In a statement Thursday, Armor All denied that its vinyl protectant ad was unfair or misleading but agreed to take the industry watchdog’s comments and concerns “into consideration in formulating future advertising.”

Connecticut-based First Brands Corp., maker of Son of a Gun protectant, filed a complaint about the Armor All ad with the industry group several months ago.

Son of a Gun was not named in the ad, which showed side-by-side strips of vinyl being sprayed with Armor All and another protectant from a bottle identical to that of Son of a Gun, First Brands complained. The ad then depicted the same vinyl after a “six-week exposure in accelerated weathering conditions.” The Armor All-treated vinyl remained bright and clean, while the vinyl treated with the “other product” was faded and spotted.

But Armor All didn’t test the products under natural sunlight, used inferior vinyl that is not representative of products found on most modern automobiles, and showed only test results that were most favorable to Armor All’s product, the industry group’s review found.

The results were also flawed because Armor All did not test its competition’s products on vinyl from the same batch it used for its own product, the study said.

Armor All, which has about 65% of the market for automobile rubber and vinyl protectants, has been the subject over the years of reports from some independent car-cleaning and polishing businesses that its products could harm vinyl dashboards and car tops that receive heavy sun exposure.

Although widely circulated, those reports have never been validated. They were underscored earlier this year, however, when a former Armor All research manager claimed in a wrongful-termination lawsuit that the company had covered up research findings that its products caused tires and air bag covers to weaken and crack.

The company has denied the allegations by Pritam Dhaliwal, and last May a San Bernardino County Superior Court judge approved the company’s request to seal research records introduced in Dhaliwal’s suit. The case is pending.