Friday, March 03, 2006

Lakeland Plastics

Like the Innovations catalogue before it, The Lakeland Plastics Catalogue provides plenty of low hanging fruit for the casual comedy-photo blog publisher.

Or, to be more precise, provides many pictures of extending telescopic low-hanging-fruit-picking implements with easy twist off attachments suitable for harvesting a range of soft and semi-soft fruit from your garden or orchard (no more stretching on potentially unsafe ladders for you, Sir)

The latest edition includes this ever useful device for the terminally incompetent and cack-handed idiot who wishes to be parted from their money.

Yes, your life has been incomplete without "Even Slice", a £15.99 oversized and unattractive piece of polypropylene (always a stylish delight in any kitchen) equipment to solve that life-impairing problem of occasionally cutting a load of bread into slightly uneven slices.

Now you can safely and neatly cut bread ....into 6 thicknesses. Which is in itself surely risky, as this amount of slice-thickness choice on the bread-cutting front could potentially paralyze some of the more feeble-minded purchasers (a category into which I suspect a significant number of the puchasers will in fact fall) into catatonic indecision, leading to potential stale bread syndrome, malnutrition and even (in extreme cases) death? It is perhaps for this very reason that this is not a product on offer in the more litigious US market.

It promises "Even Melba Toast".

"Even"

But what does that mean? That some advertising copywriter felt it important to make special mention that this excellent device can be used to avoid the unspeakable horrors of "UNeven" Melba toast?

Or that "even" is here being used to mean "in addition to". In case people may have been reading it thinking "I can see how that would certainly be a great boon in my quest to slice my bread neatly, evenly and consistently. But I am not sure from the writeup provided that it would function equally effectively in slicing bread neatly, evenly and consistently if I planned to then turn that same bread into Melba Toast. But a-ha! There is special mention of its Melba Toast slicing prowess! I am reassured! My Fears are allayed ! Brenda - poass me the phone and my credit card right away, I wish to place an order for this wonderous device!"

Who Knows....?

In one further masterstroke of the copywriters art, and Lakeland so elegantly puts it, "the best thing since sliced bread is unsliced bread".

But lets face it, thats not strictly true is it? If you wish to eat bread, having it sliced is usually (except in the case of maybe naan breadd?) an improvement on its unsliced state. In fact, slicing bread is a fairly key part of the "eating bread" process.

On reflection, to buy a bread-slicing product (a £15.99 bread slicing product at that) from someone who thinks that "unsliced" bread is something that has been invented "since" sliced bread, and is also "the best thing since sliced bread" rather than simply "a state bread is in before you slice it" is simply asking for trouble.

But don't let me stop you buying it....




1 comment:

Fran said...

I was thinking of buying one of these but your post made me laugh, and realise that of course I don't really need one.