The Hawaii Chair

So, I read about this on Joe Posnanski's blog - apparently, I'm out of the loop because this has over 2.7 million hits already on YouTube, but ... wow. Posnanski spends most of his time being one of the best sportswriters in the business, but also has a pop culture addiction rivaled perhaps only by the Sports Guy.

He has a quest to find "the next Snuggie."

His requirements:

1. Aims to fix a problem that does not actually exist (blankets don't have sleeves)

2. Does not really fix the problem (Have you tried answering a phone in a Snuggie?).

3. Is still, for almost magical reasons, irresistible to many people.

And seriously, watch this -- can you imagine buying it?

At the end of his post, Posnanski perhaps stumbles on a selling point:

But only a great info-commercial can leave you more baffled at the end than you were at the beginning."

And maybe this is the secret. Maybe people will buy the Hawaii Chair -- like they bought the Snuggie -- because at the end of the commercial they could not help but think: "That's the dumbest product I've ever seen. Maybe I should get it. Nobody would make a product that stupid, there must be some redeeming quality in it that is just not coming through on the commercial."

That's how I feel. It SEEMS impossibly dumb. It SEEMS impossibly ineffective. It SEEMS impossible that someone would not only build a chair with a motor on the bottom that spins your butt around but also create a whole system to sell them to the public. But things aren't always as they seem.