Many times companies just stretch for any idea in order to keep things new or make things appear new. These are some of the worst examples of product updates that I have seen in a while.
Beer Can Vents
“How can we get people to throw our beer down their gullets faster? We’ll put vents on the can.” It really isn’t that tough to drink from a regular can. Maybe if I drank I would find out how impaired my drinking skills could get. Maybe I just don’t understand it. Were that many people complaining about not being able to drink fast enough? The next natural progression of this idea is to put a potato gun on the bottom of the can so you can blast it down your throat.
Portable Pop Tarts
Finally a Pop Tart I can take with me. Sometimes I am on the go and don’t have time to sit down with a fork and knife to eat a whole Pop Tart. So I am excited to see that there are now Go Tarts. That must have been a fantastic board meeting to be in, to watch everybody get excited for a really dumb idea.
New and Improved
When I was a youngster I remember that Trix cereal had little colored spheres. Then one magical day the rabbit did something to make them shaped like fruit. Fast forward to modern times when I hear about a “New” shape. Oh sweetness, is it cubes, pyramids or little rabbit heads? No it’s………….Spheres??? Hey great “New” shape guys. You know it is the old shape too right? This ploy has been used by a lot of different companies to try to generate some buzz around something “New” which is actually something old.
Color Changing Beer
The people at Coors are making it too easy. They have little mountains on their beer that turn blue when it is cold. Once again, maybe your sensitivity to temperature is impaired when you are drunk so I wouldn’t know, but this seems stupid. I just picture some drunk idiot opening his fridge every 10 seconds and tasting his beer to find out if it is cold yet. He then stops and thinks, “If only the sweet rocky mountains could tell me when my beer is cold.” First of all, if your drinks were warm when you put them in the fridge and it has been less than 30 minutes they probably aren’t cold yet. If you are so drunk that you can’t tell time you probably don’t need another beer. Secondly, you can touch the bottle or can to tell if it is cold, if you are too lazy to do that then one more cold one should be at the bottom of your priority list. This product enhancement is almost as stupid as the oxymoronic slogan “Drink Responsibly”.