Or You Could Just Be Scared Of Advertising

In one of what will surely be recalled as one of this century’s greatest rebrandings, the failed rumbledrug Brawlwell III – a potent if messy cocktail of adrenergic-analogs whose unfortunate side-effects (including nausea, tachycardia, shortness of breath, sweating, trembling, xerostomia, and impaired decision-making abilities) rendered it unsuitable, or at least rather unwise, to use under combat conditions – has now passed an estimated trillion units sold since its various independent manufacturers renamed it Terror Alert Red and marketed it as a hedonic catering to those who wish to experience “authentic fear” under controlled conditions.

Well played, gentlesophs. While not eligible for a formal award, we at the Meta-Marketing Monitor salute you!

– a letter published in the Independent Worlds Router

Cross-Cultural Marketing

“There is no engineering reason, given appropriate design safeguards against cross-contamination, why one should not simply bolt a base-model food-fabber onto the back of a portable latrine. Since most excretions make good chowfab feedstock for the excreting species, biochemistry being what it is, this is merely an efficient application of closed-circle life-support principles.

“We even have a certain sympathy for the designers’ belief that the intended users of the Refugium Chowfab 1100, those being dwellers in refugee camps and disaster-struck regions, should consider their circumstances more than sufficient motivation to shed any remaining squeamishness about the diameter of the local circle of life.

“Nothing, however, excuses Paltraeth Materiel’s choice of the slogan – emblazoned upon each 1100 with accompanying market-cute animated logo – ‘When The Shit Hits The Fan, Eat It’.”

– Eye on Specifications, Summer 7292 issue