I always recount the story of the Hovercraft Christmas.
There was one toy I wanted for Christmas. We were firmly middle class growing up, so it wasn’t like I had all the toys, but I was old enough to know that my parents were footing the bill and getting an RC hovercraft was going to mean I only get one present that year.
Iirc it was called the Typhoon, or maybe the Typhoon II.
The commecials showed it zipping across land and water, jumping off ramps, bouncing off a lake, etc. It was the coolest fucking thing ever. I begged my parents for it, and would not shut up for months about getting an RC hovercraft.
Christmas comes, and wonderous joy, I got the hovercraft! Life is good, but the battery needs to charge. Shit, OK, we plug it in and let it charge all day while we go do the normal Christmas family visits. Everyone I talked to that day got a lesson in how hovercrafts work, and how it can travel on a pocket of air to move across land AND water.
We got home late that night. It was probably after 10pm, way past everyone’s bedtime, including my parents who had been up all night making the Christmas magic happen for my younger siblings who still believed. But I put my fucking foot down. I had waited for months to get my hovercraft. I had waited all day for the battery to charge. I would not wait another god damned minute to go zipping around the backyard. So, my dad and I put coats on over our pajamas, went out to the driveway, and fired that bad boy up.
I can still perfectly remember the sound of the fans turning on, and the little rubber skirt inflating. Sure enough, the hovercraft was floating on a pocket of air! But the driveway was on a mild incline, so the hovercraft started to drift sideways. Then I hit the throttle and… nothing. Just the sound of the fans spinning, but no motion.
Bzzzzz. BZZZZZZ. Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz. The fans spun impotently against the inertia of the hovercraft. It wouldn’t move at all, except to sadly drift towards the gutter. My dad gave it a little nudge with his foot, and it got stuck on a tiny stone chip.
I learned a lot about physics from that one night, but I learned even more about advertising.
Thinking back on all the RC cars, planes, and yes, hovercraft, commercials that I saw as a kid, I think they ought to have been sued for false advertising. Realistically though they probably had some disclaimer read (at 8x speed) at the end of the commercial that absolved them of any false advertising by saying the commercial was merely depicting the fantasy of the toy and not the actual use of it.
Are there any old ads you can link to on YouTube for this thing? I wanna see!
All lies. The fans couldn’t push the thing without a polished smooth surface. You see it spinning? Think about where the fans are, because that’s the only steering it had.
Kid I knew 25 years ago had one. Actually kinda worked on an indoor pool, which was neat, but definitely didn’t work for shit on the sidewalk. Basically, it didn’t work at all in any sort of wind and barely worked on anything rougher than linoleum
I got burned by this too. I feel your pain.
Dad figured out that if we hosed the concrete driveway, it made a better seal, and handeled bumps and impetfections better.
It was a glorious 3 minutes before the water started to seep in to the concrete quickly. The Typhoon nosedived and tore its skirt.
0/10 would not hovercraft again.
Maaaan I remember these ads! Thanks for sharing.
Man, what a bummer. My equivalent to this was an RC car called the “Skydriver”. But it absolutely lived up to my expectations. That thing was frickin awesome.
Duke Caboom nods approvingly
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TBF electric scooters are doing that now. Dude was just ahead of his time.
Also if you take “the way we view cities” literally, they definitely did since they became a popular way for tourists to view a city.
Ahead of his time? It is a different product working with a different (and far older) principle?
The principle here that matters is “personal electric low-skill vehicle”. Segway tried it first, but electric scooters were way cheaper, and the GPS/smartphone technology helped it a lot.
CEO fell off a cliff with his Segway and died
Crucially to the mythology, it was the CEO who recently acquired the company, not the inventor who pioneered it
There’s a great episode of The Dollop about the Segway guy. 565 - Dean Kamen and It.
Dean Kamen is so cool to me, because he’s pretty unknown but has had such a positive impact on the world, especially with his STEM outreach to school kids. I got to meet him once briefly after the FRC national championship in 2014, he was going somewhere but still stopped to talk to us briefly and I thanked him and he signed my team hat.
I wouldn’t recommend you listen to the Dollop episode though, they tend to mercilessly mock their subjects.
Dating sites. Complete useless trash.
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That’s no way to talk about your wife.
Is there a Lemmy version of the ol reddit switcheroo?
The next time you see a similar joke you could be the one to start it!
A Lemmon Twist?
Thanks I hate it
Wow, all of them, huh?
When everyone around you is an asshole, it’s time to reevaluate who the real asshole is.
I’ve had some great experiences, but I’m sure everyone’s mileage may vary
I think it got really bad the past few years. I think many people don’t even know that, but tinder used to be free. You got 5 free super swipes or something, unlimited swiping and so on. Now you can swipe a few times for free, and it is never ever the people who already liked you. It has a feature where you can limit your range and disable people from around the world. But half the women i see are from china or thailand. Women get flooded with likes and matches while as (an average?) guy, it’s like playing the lottery.
The problem that i see with that is that men generally don’t pick their “dream girl” they jest pick what they can get. Which is a weird dynamic for any sort of relationship. “Of all the likes, i picked you, because of your smile and we both like cycling.” “You were my only match in 3 month.”
I mean yeah but I also found my SO that way
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Huh?
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Sure buddy, sure
I’d have a much shorter list of what products did live up to their advertised claims…
Fallout 76.
Don’t forget nuka dark rum
But, best-case scenario, you could have committed a sex crime!
Mario Party Advance on the Game Boy Advance.
I’ve seen kkclue’s very recent video on it. The main problem with this game is the false advertising, it doesn’t feel like a Mario Party game. Otherwise, it’s an alright game.
Kirby vacuums. I got one for free from a neighbor and she included the invoice by mistake. $2200 for a vacuum that smells like burning and can’t lift pet hair. Brush is working, bag is new, carpet is being lifted from the pad. But man, this thing fails at pet hair.
There was a brand that worked by filling the tank with water and applying a vacuum to use the water as a filter. They weren’t amazing but they cost like $2k in 2001 money. My ex had one that her father had bought and I finally convinced her to get rid of it once it started shocking her.
Rainbow vacuums, my parents had one when I was growing up.
We still have one and it works really well. I suspect they were over filling the water reservoir
bong-vacuums
really? we’ve had ours for 21 years or so, and it still works well. admittedly we use the dyson almost exclusively now
Sounds like it really sucks.
Actually, Kirby vacuums worked amazingly well and worked for years, if not decades. But they weighed a ton and could NOT handle pet hair.
A Willy Wonka experience in Scotland
Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker. The movie was already getting a bad rep pre-release, and in response to potentially sales-damaging claims that Palpatine was coming back, Disney had Ian McDiarmid explicitly claim he wasn’t. A bad movie where there was nobody to point a finger to became a bad movie where there was someone to do it to. Then he passed away shortly after. I witnessed this mess all go down in theaters.
Ian McDiarmid didn’t pass away. But yes, this movie might be the single worst cinematic disappointment I’ve ever witnessed in my life. I’ll never watch it again.
Gosh dang it, I was fooled by another death rumor.
Crystal Skull springs to mind as a close second
Rather obvious that ‘What product did live up to its advertised claims?’ is a more useful question…
Yes, but then people can’t have a nice whinge about it.
Pinephone, linux on smartphones isn’t ready and this won’t change any time soon.
Depends if you need group MMS or not
Air-up water bottles. When I bought mine it claimed to be a better water bottle all-around.
Its primary gimmick of tricking the brain into tasting the scent works well, I did drink a lot more water without needing actual flavouring. The fact that I could (unofficially) 3D print my own reusable flavouring pods to be a little more eco-friendly was a nice surprise and the reason I decided to try it.
The “better bottle” part is utter horse crap. It leaks when tipped over, even when tightly closed. Their marketing team went as far as adding “sip, don’t tip” to the instructions instead of making the cap properly seal.
Drinking from it was a chore as there was no water pressure and the constant bubbling (lets be real, its more like wet fart) noises made it impossible to use in silent settings.
I ended up going back to reusing a disposable bottle until it leaks even though the thought and feeling of something flavourless being in my mouth is revolting (its a sensory thing).
have you tried plain soda water? the carbonation might make it interesting enough to be drinkable even though it’s flavorless. if you get a drinkmate or something like that it’s fairly cheap to make at home
Drinkmate is the way to go. Vastly superior to sodastream
I’m one of those creatures that flattens out fizzy drinks before drinking xD
Holy cow. It’s like someone thought “the human race isn’t using enough single use plastic, how can we pump up those numbers? Maybe we can tie it in to the basic consumption of tap water.”
Remember how Google’s Find My Network was supposed to be as good or better than Apple’s. We put a tracker in a checked bag. Couldn’t track it from once we lost sight till when it was 10 feet from me.
Head on…I applied directly to the forehead, but nothing happened.
I got an uncomfortable cooling sensation that couldn’t be wiped off. It made the headache worse.
I always assumed the reason they repeated that line and only implied it was for headaches with the animation is because they knew it wouldn’t work and wanted to avoid being called out for false advertising. Honestly if I was ever told it worked I would be absolutely astounded.
Every single anti depressant, anti anxiety or anti anything drug that acts like a placebo.
According to Dr. Chris Palmer and Dr. Georgia Ede, you’re more likely to get better results by just changing your diet.
