Proof That You Can Make People Pay for Something That Is Free

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Have you ever seen a piece of exercise equipment that was so useless and that made users look so ridiculous that you wonder why anyone would even bother inventing it?

On today's trip through the world of Amazon, there was an item on the front page that caught my eye. Okay, it only caught my eye because it was right next to the pictures that were trying to sell me lingerie, but my eye was caught regardless.

"Noooo," I laughed to myself in disbelief as I clicked the link, "They can't be serious."

They are. They actually want to sell me a ropeless jump rope. Yes, even Mozilla's spellchecker does not believe its figurative eyes. A jump rope that isn't a rope at all? Isn't that, you know, sort of like jumping? Yes, but with this your friends will know you spent so much money in an effort to get in shape! They say that it is to prevent tripping. Chances are if you didn't learn how to jump rope as a kid without tripping or if your hand-eye coordination is so off that your brain can't process "jump!," you have bigger problems on your hands.

The product feature list goes on to talk about how portable it is. Rope isn't portable? Rope manages to make it onto every wilderness survival "must-have" list, but carrying around a few feet is just so cumbersome. Mankind has been utilizing rope to do pretty much everything for centuries, but apparently it's fallen out of fashion because it fails to be flashy and expensive.


This thing is packaged with 3 DVD workouts. 3! If I were to make a DVD of a ropeless jump rope, it would contain:
•Slow jumping
•Fast jumping
•Double Dutch (for two lazy people and their stupid friend)
•Criss-Cross (For those who don't think they look stupid enough jumping up and down waving their hands about)

The rest would be a constant shot of my middle finger. They wouldn't notice, though, because once they hear the word "fast" they will turn the DVD off in fear of breaking a sweat.

And, finally, it's patented. Someone went through the trouble of making sure no one else would be "brilliant" enough to steal their idea.

The only use I can see for a ropeless jump rope is to prevent people from hanging themselves once they find out they spent money to jump up and down.