The Consumer Category
We bring you the chic and unique, the best and most bizarre shopping offers both online and offline. We offer you tips on where to buy, and some of the less mainstream and crazy, individual and offbeat items on the internet. Anything that can be bought and sold can be featured here. And we love showcasing the best and worst art and design.
Regretful Reviews: Supertaster Amanda And Paddy Spend 10 Minutes Reviewing A Terry’s Chocolate Orange
IN this regretful review ‘Supertaster Amanda’ and Paddy Uglow spend 10 minutes reviewing a Terry’s Chocolate Orange.
I don’t think it’s a parody. It should be. But I just don’t think it is.
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Posted: 16th, April 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment
10 Terrible Easter Treats From Your Christian Childhood
EASTER is upon us. How will you celebrate? Chocolate and sweet treats are traditional methods. Let’s take a look at some of the worst Easter sweets for Jesus, which all taste of regret and guilt:
Scripture Candy
Spotter: Reddit
Easter Sunday Munchies
Hey kids…
Jesus with the flip top head
An 8Bit Easter
Celebrate Easter and your childhood gaming memories at the same time. You used to search for a princess. On the first Easter, Mary searched for someone much more important. Please spread the word! Share on Facebook and Pinterest. Let others in your church know about this 8bit Easter shirt and help us raise funds for our church!!
The Real Easter Egg (from the UK!)
EGG-stasy:
Inside is a 24 page Easter story book, a Belgian milk chocolate egg and pack of Swiss Chocolate organic Chunky Buttons. A charity donation is made from each sale. There are three crosses on the front and under the lid there is a quote from the bible – the resurrection text from Mark chapter 16. £3.99 each delivered in boxes of 6.
Egg-cellent:
A special edition Real Easter Egg. Inside is an olive wood holding cross from Bethlehem, an Easter message an extra thick Belgian Chocolate gold foiled egg (180g) and Meaningful milk Chocolate bar with a hint of natural orange (100g). The box has gold foil highlights and Celtic crosses. £9.99 each delivered in single boxes.
Egg-ceptional:
Inside are 20 Midi eggs and 20 copies of the Easter story 8 page booklet. Midi-egg foil reads ‘The Real Easter Egg. Christ is Risen.’ Ideal for church services, assemblies or events where you have a budget of £1 per person. £19.99 each delivered in single boxes.
Lamb-shaped butter
Bat s***!
Spotter: The American Jesus
Sticky fingers
Spotter: Christian Nightmares
Rabbits!
Posted: 15th, April 2014 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
Airbnb Home Share Is A Boom To Prostitution
YOU may or may not know what Airbnb is. It’s a system whereby people can rent out their homes, or an extra bedroom, for a couple of days or a week or whatever. And therefore it’s also a website where you can rent a room in a town for a week or a night or two or whatever. Well, that’s great and it’s booming, currently worth some $10 billion as a company. But obviously, people have found a way to exploit that system as well:
Hookers are using the controversial Airbnb home-sharing Web site to turn prime Manhattan apartments into temporary brothels, The Post has learned.
One escort service is even saving a bundle by renting Airbnb apartments instead of hotel rooms for clients’ quickies, says a 21-year-old call girl who works for the illicit business.
“It’s more discreet and much cheaper than The Waldorf,” said the sex worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“Hotels have doormen and cameras. They ask questions. Apartments are usually buzz-in.”
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Posted: 15th, April 2014 | In: Money, Reviews, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Vintage Footwear Adverts Unlaced
LADIES – no need to fight. There are shoes aplenty in this article, so there are more than enough for the both of you. Here is a cornucopia of retro footwear adverts that should keep everyone satisfied for a while. From hippy clogs to funky sidewinders fit for the most stylish of 70s pimps, they’re all here. Some of the advertisements are blatantly sexist, some are just plain odd, but there is much fun to be had. Enjoy!
Each Dexter shoe comes with a hotel coupon and a free condom. Plus, the shoes are highly durable and waterproof in case you’re going to move on from Casual Dex to Fetish Dex.
For much of the Seventies, no brand embodied the Black Power philosophy as much as Flagg Brothers and Eleganza. They offered the very best in pimpwear – I’m talkin’ ermine collars, big ass heels and pearl handle canes. African-American fashions were bold and flamboyant during this decade – if the jive-turkeys didn’t like it, they could kiss their black ass.
A completely nude woman hopelessly in love with a guy’s shoes. Is this advert pure genius, or pure sexist? I’d posit that it’s a lot of both.
It’s become a cliché to say that fashion is circular, but it is absolutely true. The 1970s clogs above would have been absolutely mocked and ridiculed in the 80s and 90s. In 1986, you would have been stoned to death and your entirely family imprisoned for sliding into a platform mule. Today, it’s the entirely fashionable…. although, embroidered fruit still hasn’t made a comeback. In due time.
At first this just seems incredibly odd; however, I guess there are stranger things than choosing to paint your shoes. Apparently, they even had “animal textures” – for instance, you could spray on lizard skin. (And at that point, I would start to question your mental condition.)
Amazingly, someone along the way thought having a nude middle-aged man on a ladder was a good way to sell slippers. But, before you start feeling too sorry for yourself for being subjected to this – just think about what a view those poor firemen are getting!
Very few people know this, but it’s a fact that Nostradamus actually predicted the arrival of the denim boot.
In the land with a climate opposite to Babylon there will be great shedding of blood.
Heaven will seem unjust both on land and sea and in the air.
Sects, famine, kingdoms, denim boots, plagues, and confusion shall rule the Earth.
– Century I, Quatrain 55
What significance it has remains to be seen, but the mysterious denim boot will no doubt play a major role in the apocalypse.
It says the footwear was designed especially for Pat Boone. I’m assuming that means it will never become unclean and remain for all time as pure as the wind driven snow. In this advert, Pat demonstrates the magic of Velcro – “the closure invention of the century”. There’s even directions for proper Velcro use: “to close, press together – to open, peel apart.”
These slippers come in a variety of colors: Spring Green, Royal Blue, Cocoa Brown, and Glowing Nuclear Waste Orange. All Minute Crochet Slippers are machine washable and stain resistant, except the orange, which may cause birth defects, tumors and long term environmental devastation.
The infamous “egg chair” was perhaps mankind’s greatest creation, yet it fell out of favor by the end of the 1970s. You were comfortably enclosed within this upholstered ovum, and some even had speakers inside…. a toker’s throne, you might say.
A guy in a leisure suit is framed by a ring of godawful footwear – Worst selfie ever.
This seems to be nothing more than a cheap and shameless ploy to grab our attention by having us look up this chick’s skirt. In a perfect world, all adverts would be this cheap and shameless. I’ll wager this particular shoe advert had more than its share of men examining it close-up for any glimpse of immodesty.
And speaking of cheap and shameless… ¡Ay, caramba!
Posted: 15th, April 2014 | In: Fashion, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
Boeing Dreamliner: US Air Tweeted This Photo Of A Woman With A Toy Plane In Her ‘Lady Hanger’
THE Boeing 787 Dreamliner also did sound a bit like a tampon. Maybe that explains why US Airways reacted to a woman who complained of a bad flight with a photo of a woman with a model of a Boeing 777 in her vagina?
Or was it comment on leg room?
The tweet was up for around an hour before it was deleted.
A US Air rep (see above) said:
“We apologize for an inappropriate image recently shared as a link in one of our responses. We’ve removed the tweet and are investigating.”
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Posted: 14th, April 2014 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Britain’s Biggest Hero Lives In Stonegate And Ticket Inspectors Spread TB In Cattle
THE biggest fare dodger in railway history is Our Hero. Every work day for five years Our Hero travelled from his home in Stonegate to London’s Canon Street station. He worked out that if he swiped an Oyster card at Canon Street but not at Stonegate, East Sussex, the machine undercharged him.
Bright lad. His quick wits and low cunning saved him £42,000 in train fares.
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Posted: 14th, April 2014 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Man Banned From Buying Alcohol In Co-op After Joking It Was For 12-Year-Old Daughter
“THAT’S your beer sorted out,” said Kieran O’Sullivan, 48, to his sober 12-year-old daughter as they attempted to pay for alcohol at a Co-op supermarket in Worthing, West Sussex. We say attempted because the cashier heard the quip and banned Kieran from buying the booze.
She demanded to see the child’s ID. Was she over 18? If not, then she’d have to get her kicks from smoking bedbugs like all the other kids, or else call the Co-op’s bank and order some crystal meth.
Mr O’Sullivan is a teacher. He probably needs the drink. He tells the Argus:
“So there I am, this middle aged, middle income, average Joe, cracking an innocent joke to my entirely sober 12-year-old daughter when the cashier narrows her eyes and says, ‘I’ll have to see your ID, sir.’ I asked if she was kidding, but then she asked to see my daughter’s ID, which made me laugh.
“She said that by law, if you make a comment about purchasing alcohol for a child then they had to see both our IDs. I asked to speak to the manager but instead of using his judgement, he backed his employee up and said it was the law. I told them I was clearly not getting alcohol for my daughter and the law was all about judgement and about circumstances. But they refused.”
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Posted: 14th, April 2014 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
1936: Claud Butler Cycling Tweed Suits For Whitsun
ANYBODY else think cycling gear has gone downhill since this Claud Butler Whitsun “rigout” was advertised in 1936?
Seattle Burger Shop Uses Bong Toking Jesus To Celebrate Cheap Easter Meat
OUTAGE in Seattle, Washington, over the new ad for burger eatery Lunchbox Laboratory featuring the call to celebrate Easter with a weed-smoking Jesus. The ad tells readers:
“When I get back all I want is the Burger of the Gods.”
Jesus is holding a burger and a joint, with the 4/20 date highlighted in green.
Lunchbox Laboratory owner John Schmidt tells KIRO radio:
“We knew we were pushing it a little bit but at the same time that is kind of what our marketing is about.”
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Posted: 13th, April 2014 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Singapore Tourism Board’s Promo Video Is A Big WTF?
THIS Singapore Tourism Board’s Promo video is more than a little odd. Stay with it to the end.
Come and see ‘where the world is heading’:
Posted: 12th, April 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Murderabilia: Nurse Wants £10,000 For Harold Shipman’s Medical Examination Couch
PSST! Wannabe buy Dr Harold Shipman’s old medical examination couch? He was Britain’s most prolific serial killer, given 15 life sentences for the murders of as many as 215 patients.
Marjorie Chakravarti, 72, was a senior sister at the Abraham Ormerod Day Hospital, Todmorden where Shipman began his career as a GP and worked for seven years. She saw his old couch and bought it for £10.
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Posted: 12th, April 2014 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
1903: Girlie Mag Vanity Fair Profiles ‘The Bifurcated Girls: Gay Girls In Trousers’
IN 1903, The Commonwealth Publishing Company of New York City’s magazine Vanity Fair (no, another one; this one ran from February 1902 to April 1904) produced the article on The Bifurcated Girls: Gay Girls In Trousers.
Dian Hansen notes inHistory of Men’s Magazines:
While France had a well-established men’s magazine industry by 1900, America was just showing its ankles in 1903. A magazine called Vanity Fair (unrelated to the current incarnation) was the raciest thing around, and rooming house loozies the hotties of the time. In this New York, tabloid girls who drank like men might strip down to their petticoats and fall into bed together, exposing their corset cover and stockings to peeping male boarders. The famously loose morals of stage actresses made them popular subjects for these shenanigans, but the biggest thrill of all was bifurcation. “What?” one may well ask. Bifurcation, meaning “split in two”, referred to the contours of a woman’s legs revealed by her donning men’s trousers. Bifurcation was a regular and very popular feature in Vanity Fair, it’s popularity leading to Vanity Fair’s Bifurcated Girls.
Posted: 8th, April 2014 | In: Fashion, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
5 Highly Troubling Vintage Adverts
HERE is some free advice for up-and-coming marketing execs: Adverts should not make consumers feel nauseous or deeply uncomfortable. Nor should they cause consumers to experience waking nightmares or abdominal pain. You wouldn’t think this sort of instruction would be necessary, but here are five examples which demonstrate that it is. Please take notes.
1. SEXUALLY AROUSED STUFFED TOYS PROMOTE BEAR HOSIERY
“What a treat to stocking those legs. Wish I were a man,” says the first bear. I’m not sure how I feel about stuffed animals ogling over a woman’s legs. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer Teddy Bears without a sexual appetite.
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Posted: 7th, April 2014 | In: Fashion, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
The 1940 Reader: A Potato That Wasn’t A Christian
IN 1940, the pamphlet A potato that wasn’t a Christian hit the streets.
Now read on:
Mummy. Who makes potatoes..?
Spotter: Baby Jesus on a Cross, Christian Nightmares
Posted: 6th, April 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Strange But True | Comments (2)
Artist Jessica Harrison Makes Wonderful Blood And Bone China Statues
JESSICA Harrison makes the most fantastic art. Jessica, a graduate of the Edinburgh College of Art in 2000, holds a practice-led PhD in sculpture funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Her research considers the relationship between interior and exterior spaces of the body, but looks neither inwards towards a hidden core, nor outwards from the subconscious, instead looking orthogonally across the skin to the movement of the body itself, using the surface of the body as a mode of both looking and thinking.
Moving beyond a bi-directional model, Harrison proposes a multi-directional and pervasive model of skin as a space in which body and world mingle. Working with this moving space between artist/maker and viewer, she draws on the active body in both making and interpreting sculpture to unravel imaginative touch and proprioceptive sensation in sculptural practice. In this way, Harrison re-describes the body in sculpture through the skin, offering an alternative way of thinking about the body beyond a binary tradition of inside and outside.
It’s better to look at her work than it is to read about. Jessica’s porcelain sculptures might be called Inside LLadro: Blood & Bone China:
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Posted: 6th, April 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Vintage Sexism: The A.C. Gilbert ‘Lab Technician Set For Girls’ (1958)
IN 1958 New Haven-based toymaker A.C. Gilbert Company turned youngsters onto science with a new kit. The LAB TECHNICIAN SET was a “CAREER BUILDING SCIENCE” kit.
And it was got Girls.
Posted: 6th, April 2014 | In: Flashback, Technology, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Boys’ Fiction: Ripping Yarns From The Victorian and Edwardian Heyday of Public School Fiction
AT last, a welcome repeat of Michael Palin and Terry Jones’s Ripping Yarns – post-Python parodies of all things public school and derring-do.
The series is reflected upon, and its inspiration investigated, in this highly enjoyable BBC documentary…
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Posted: 6th, April 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
1978: Spiderman’s Celebrity Party (Can You Name All The Guests?)
FLASHBACK to 1978: Spiderman’s Celebrity Party
January 1978 cover of Marvel’s Pizzazz magazine. The magazine only lasted 16 issues.
Can you name them all?
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Posted: 5th, April 2014 | In: Books, Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
Vancouver Restaurant Invites Musicians To Play Free Of Charge – And One Makes A Great Counter-Offer
AD of the day: Vancouver restaurant invites musicians to play free of charge – and one makes a counter-offer:
Spotter: @BarnabyEdwards
Posted: 4th, April 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Mad Men Rejoice: Plain Packaging For Cigarettes Will Increase Branding
AS you’ll know there’s a move to get to the plain packaging of cigarettes. This is the rather strange idea that if we can’t associate red with Marlboro and white with Silk Cut then we’ll smoke fewer cigarettes overall. Quite why is never really explained but we are assured that it will be true.
There’s something of a problem with the idea though. Which is that abolishing branding for legal cigarettes will probably lead to more branding by illegal ones. The reason is that a brand is an identification: it tells people something about the quality, and consistency of whatever the brand is associated with.
So prevalent have some lines of Cheap Whites become in parts of the UK where the majority of cigarette sales are now non-dutied through boot sales and under-counter trades that they are establishing brand loyalties; people like cigarette characteristics they are used to, in terms of taste, strength, throat-feel, acridity and so on, and when they find an illegal brand that mimics, say, Superkings will stick with it.
Which offers the intriguing possibility that with the government’s moves to introduce plain packaging for the legitimate TMA members already feeling the pinch, it’s unlikely the Cheap Whites will follow step; if anything, they will surely tend to improve their pack image.
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Posted: 4th, April 2014 | In: Money, Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
10 Revolting Packaged Foods That Taste Of Regret
STROLLING down Memory Lane on the way to Anorak Towers, we came across an old advertisement for Spangles – the sweet signifier of choice for lazy peddlers of nostalgia.
But instead of invoking it alongside Chopper bicycles and Spacehoppers, it invoked an earlier, less innocent time, when germs were everywhere, and the role of confectionary packaging wasn’t simply to announce the Old English delights within, but to keep dirt out. ALL dirt. Yes, that includes you, Foreign Dirt, coming over year and contaminating our indigenous flavours.
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Posted: 2nd, April 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
Regrettable Reads: A Stack Of Objectively Bad Vintage Books
THEY say not to judge a book by its cover, but I think it’s pretty safe to say all of these books are horrible without ever turning a page. That being said, it’s sometimes fun to check out some good old fashioned paperback trash – so let’s have a look.
NAKED BRUNCH
Perhaps this is a prequel to the William Burrough’s classic, Naked Lunch. I suggest, then, a third volume called Naked Supper and make it a trilogy.
THE MAN WHO SAID NO
You mean they actually found the guy who said no to sex? I thought it was just an urban legend……. Oh, wait…. I’ve just been informed it’s a false alarm. He didn’t say “no”; he was merely clearing his throat. It’s all been a big mistake. False alarm.
RONALD REAGAN: A MAN TRUE TO HIS WORD
My favorite part of Ronald Reagan: A Man True To His Word is when the president sells arms to Iran then uses the cash to fund the Nicaraguan rebels. Don’t miss the exciting climax when he completely denies it.
INCLUDED OUT
“Suspecting Linnie’s affairs with the others, Chris’ vanity couldn’t accept the thought of being included out because of his age.”
I think the word they’re looking for is “excluded”. Somebody get Mary S. Gooch a dictionary pronto.
I WAS A TEEN-AGE DWARF
No offense to those short of stature, but this title puts the vertically challenged on par with being a werewolf or Frankenstein. (Note: This is a Dobie Gillis novel, so it was actually pretty popular in its day.)
KISS MY FIST!
Damn! Those hardboiled pulp fiction novels could get to be pretty brutal, but this is extreme. Just be glad I didn’t show you the back cover where he karate chops a kitten.
SWEET DADDY: THE STORY OF A PIMP
I think there’s been a mistake. The title should read something like: Sweet Daddy: The Story of a Tax Attorney. I’m no authority on pimps, but I think they could have chosen a guy who looks a lot more “pimp like”.
BURT REYNOLDS HOT LINE: THE LETTERS I GET AND WRITE!
I doubt Burt even noticed the naked woman attached to his backside. In the 1970s, nude females collected on Burt’s body like barnacles. Lucky bastard.
COUCH OF DESIRE
Forget 50 Shades of Grey, I recommend Couch of Desire (truthfully, it’s probably written better). But if the eroticism is just too extreme for your tastes, I suggest the much lighter read, Beanbag Chair of Friendship.
GOOD NIGHT SWEET DYKE
A perfect end to our reading list of shame. Good night, dear reader.
Posted: 2nd, April 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment (1)
