Craptacular, Craptacular!

The wicked witch of Halloween’s corpse had hardly shed a degree of body temperature before stores started hawking Christmas goodies this year, much to my chagrin. I know Christmas is the season where retailers really make their money for the year, but the way things are going these days, I’m expecting next year’s Christmas hysteria will start in June. What’s worse, consumer product manufacturers are really struggling to identify new markets for consumers and coming up with some truly crap gift ideas.

For example, consider this value proposition: it’s Christmas and you’re away from home, working hard at a customer site. Why not bring a little Christmas cheer into your life with a USB LED Christmas light? Are they insane? I swear, it’s like consumers are desperate to burn their money: “Sure, yearly savings as a percentage of post-tax earnings are in negative territory in the US, but I gots ta get me a glowing fake Christmas tree to plug into my computer!”

Even worse are the gifts people buy other people. I swear, a significant portion of Earth’s natural resources are sitting in a closet somewhere just because someone felt they needed to buy a Remington Shaver for that hairy relative they don’t really like. At the bottom of the barrel-of-consumer-shame is those products that aren’t actually designed to be used. You know the gifts I’m talking about, those gag gifts where the majority of the product’s value is the gag of giving them to someone.

Example: Does anyone really need a Dead Bug Funeral Kit? How about a Hipster Handbook? I mean, if the bug is dead, a dignified burial isn’t going to change anything; and if you’re a hipster, why would you need a manual? Unless, of course, you’re actually trying to be a hipster, in which case you need more than a book to help you.

The moral of this Christmas story is simple: stop shopping big and start thinking big.