Monday 14 September 2009

Give us all your money

Whilst flicking through a wildlife magazine the other day looking for something to take the piss out of (yes, I’m in that sort of mood) I came across a couple of perfect targets. Needless to say, both were adverts...

The first offending piece of marketing bollocks was for a ‘High Powered Telescope’ with 60x magnification. Every time they mentioned the 60x magnification it said ‘6000%’ in brackets. Three times in a full page advert. Who ever measured optical magnification as a percentage? No-one (at least no-one sane). That figure is there simply to impress idiots.

There was also a little inset bit that read ‘Observe wildlife, sports, the night sky, in detail, from a distance.’ Question: how the fuck else are you going to observe the night sky other than ‘from a distance’?

But the advert got better. If you buy this amazing 6000% magnification scope from them (for a mere £79.95, saving £120 on the price it was being sold at three years ago), you also get a FREE SPY SCOPE (worth £9.95)!! This appears to be a pen, but no, wait, it has ‘precision-engineered optical lenses, so powerful you can see up to 7 miles away!’

Only 7 miles? I can see further than that through a fucking toilet roll. I can see about 230,000 miles if I look at the moon through my precision-engineered bog roll. And if I look elsewhere in the night sky (yes, even from a distance) I can see objects up to a couple of million light-years away through my 1x magnification (100%) cardboard tube. And I can wipe my arse on the ‘special paper’ that came with it – bet you can’t do that with your ‘spy scope’!

There was one more item in the magazine which caught my jaundiced eye. I’d better not name it, but it was some sort of clip to stop your bins swinging while you’re walking along with them round your neck. The description said ‘A new “must-have” accessory... a device which is fixed to the binoculars or camera and then clipped to the user’s coat or shirt preventing the inevitable bounce and swing...’

This sounds like exactly the sort of pointless invention that regularly gets laughed out of Dragons’ Den. I can just imagine Duncan Bannatyne (if he was a birder, which as far as I know he isn’t, and if he was allowed to swear on the programme) saying: “The only person who would find this useful would be someone who hardly ever uses their binoculars. I want to be able to get my bins up to my eyes in a fraction of a second; any longer than that and the bird I want to look at might have moved or disappeared. I don’t want to be pissing around undoing a fucking clip before I can lift them, and for that reason, I’m out.”

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You often see these bullshit adverts claiming high magnifications for scopes, especially in department stores which have crap pseudo-astronomical scopes making ludicrous claims of '500x magnification', which is bollocks. With such as scope as that, you'd be doing bloody well to see anything of the night sky at all, bar the Moon, if you're lucky.

Skev said...

I noticed the same fuckwitted advert in Natural World when it popped through my door last week. I notice that you have a 'cast-iron' guarantee on your money back if you are not 100% satisfied. I am surprised they are not expecting you to be 6000% satisfied .....
Anyone buying one of those matey-clippy things obviously needs their hands free for wanking in the bushes.

beast said...

Used to get a glossy type booklet shoved thru the door every now and then with all these 'new' idea's. Seem to have stopped gettin em now...which is a shame...coz i found them hilarious reading. 'They' were full of problem solving inventions...like how to remove unwanted cats from yer arse...'Buy this latest innovation...the all new 'cat-be-gone' removal system...[that looks remarkably like a hoover..except they've added whiskers to the nozzle]....
Or.....'buy this new set of especially designed safety knives for kids...made entirely of rubber...only £45'...completely safe...completely useless..[fuckin bargain]....how i miss that 'booklet'....think it was actually called 'Innovations'?

ps...oh yes...they did have a great range of quality optics...all with 'red' objective lenses...so you know they had to be good...

The Leicester Llama said...

A hoover with whiskers on the nozzle - now that could lead to some interesting descriptions being submitted to John's Sex Act Rarities Committee (of which he seems to be 'judge, jury and executioner'. Presumably the 'executions' are carried out using a belt, a carrier bag and an orange segment...).

Anonymous said...

I'm actually looking for experts to cum onto the panel Andy - ooh that sounds like another sex act, cumming on a panel.