More Chinese Farmer Innovations: Baby Buddha Pears! | InventorSpot

Buddha Pears

Buddha Pears

Farmer Gao XianZhang has created a plastic mold that he uses to enclose each pear, and eventually the fruit will assume the shape of that mold. It’s a simple enough idea, and of course it’s hardly the first time that anyone has done this with some fruit. But you’ve got to credit Farmer Gao with coming up with a design that consumers will be attracted to.  And Chinese consumers tend to bite when it comes to this ‘good luck’ jazz.

via More Chinese Farmer Innovations: Baby Buddha Pears! | InventorSpot.

I don’t want to buy them, I just want a tree with little Buddhas hanging off of it like that.

Misleading marketing by French’s Mustard

mustard.jpg Glance at that bottle and you notice that French’s uses the familiar, “Now with x% more!” or “x% more free!” pattern on their bottle design.

Now read the actual label, “40% More than our 14 oz.” Oh, I see. The bigger bottle is bigger than the smaller bottle. Gee, thanks for that info French’s!

They are purposefully using that familiar design pattern to trick customers into thinking that they are getting a better deal by buying the bigger bottle. What complete jerks. Hey French’s, how did your marketing department find the time in their busy schedule of despising customers to do the math for us?

I was annoyed enough that I decided to write a letter to French’s to complain. What I would really like is for the marketing guy who came up with this to take credit for it and justify this jerk move. I clicked the link to leave a complaint and got this:

Contact French's1.png

Way to go French’s, you get my bad customer experience award this week! There are a lot bigger things to complain about, I know, but I hate to see these kind of lame moves by companies.

(Just to nitpick, isn’t 20 oz. actually 42.8% more than 14 oz.? When you aren’t actually giving the customer anything more you can afford to be generous in your math…)

WoodStation Weather Display | Uncrate

Get your weather updates the more natural way with the WoodStation Weather Display ($100). This nifty gadget displays a weather forecast icon, indoor temperature and humidity, the time, and the date, all with a clever motion-activated LED display that shines through the WoodStation’s wood veneer front when activated, allowing it to look like a stylish wood sculpture when off.

via WoodStation Weather Display | Uncrate.

Swivel Straight Christmas Tree Stand with Reservoir

The single greatest Christmas tree stand ever made.

First off, I didn’t pay $79.95 for mine, you can find the model w/o the reservoir for about $40 if you look around. But, if I could only find the $80 version, I would still buy it!

Every Christmas used to start off with me under the stupid tree trying to get it straight while Adrienne gave me directions (and I am pretty sure she was always very very high while she did it, there is no other explanation). Then when I had it close to straight I would end up rigging bizarre shims and such to try to jam the tree in place because the little screw-in holders would dig into the tree or slip or who knows what. One year the tree stand had a soup can and some twine in it to get it just right. I accept that I may have been spectacularly bad at setting up the tree, but comparing notes with other people has led me to believe this was not that uncommon of an experience.

Last year I bought the Swivel Straight Stand and I will never go back. It has a “cup” base that you stick on the bottom of the tree—I always do it while the tree is still strapped to the car. You just slip the base into the stand where it clicks in. You push down a little foot pedal and then you can easily swivel the tree around until it looks right. When you have it right you just take your foot off the pedal and kick it into the lock position.

It would be easier to just show you:

Swivelstraighttree-1

Done.

I even made it sound about twenty times harder than it is. The tree goes up straight and no more Christmas swearing. The only down side at all is that you usually have to trim some of the bottom branches off so that the cup base can fit up the trunk high enough. I apologize for telling you about this so late, but we just got our tree tonight and it was so easy to put it up I sat right down and wrote this.

These were hard to find recently, but I’m glad to see them back on Amazon