November Prize Drawing!!!

Marvo 119 Comments

It’s November, so you know what that means…Thanksgiving.

A time when we stuff our faces with turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. Unless you’re vegetarian, then you might stuff your face with Tofurkey, a faux turkey made out of tofu. No matter how you stuff your face this Thanksgiving, one thing is for certain…leftovers.

Well two lucky Impulsive Buy readers will be storing and transporting their Thanksgiving leftovers in style because the Impulsive Buy is giving away two sets of the Hefty Serve ‘n Store plates and bowls.

Just remember to not microwave them.

November also means that Christmas is coming up. Is your office having a Secret Santa again this year and you want to give something better than the used Hillary Duff CD you gave away last year? The Impulsive Buy has got your back.

Another lucky Impulsive Buy reader will receive a copy of the book Stooples: Office Tools for Hopeless Fools. Of course, if you win it, make sure you read it before you re-gift it.

To enter this month’s prize drawing, just leave a comment for THIS post with the words “TPS reports” in it and whatever else you would like to say.

Please fill out the email field, because I’ll be emailing the winners for their mailing addresses. Don’t worry about the shipping, I’ll take care of it.

The Impulsive Buy will start accepting entries for the drawing on Tuesday, November 8, 2005 and stop accepting entries on Sunday, November 13, 2005. Only one entry allowed per person. The drawing is ONLY open to those in the United States, US Military APOs, and Canada. (To the rest of the planet, I’m sorry.)

Good luck!

Fine Print: The Impulsive Buy promises your email address will not be used to send you spam about prescription drugs from Canada. The Impulsive Buy also promises your mailing address will not be used to send you information about seminars that will help turn you into a millionaire overnight. Bribes will not be accepted. The Impulsive Buy will not be responsible for lost mail, premature balding, or you not being able to find parking at the mall during Black Friday.

(Editor’s Note: Thanks to Charlie Kondek from Hass MS&L for sending me the Hefty Serve ‘n Store sets to give away and thanks to Adam Najberg, co-author of Stooples, for sending me a copy of his book to give away.)

Stooples: Office Tools for Hopeless Fools

Marvo 13 Comments

OHHHH!

Oh yeah, baby!

OHHHH! OHHHH! YES!

Versatile Office Nipple Clips! That’s what I’m talking about!

OHHHH! OHHHH! OHHHH!

Me likey! Me likey!

OHHHH! OHHHH! OHHHH! YES! YES! OHHHHHHHHHH!

Me love you long time!

W-w-what? I’m sorry. I was having a quasi-product review blog editor’s wet dream. I get them after looking through product catalogs and finding a bunch of stuff I’d like to review. This time I was looking through Stooples: Office Tools for Hopeless Fools, a parody on office supply catalogs.

Office supply catalogs to a quasi-product review blog editor are like stolen Victoria’s Secret catalogs to creepy lonely men and Russian mail order bride catalogs to creepy old lonely men. We love looking through them, letting our imaginations run wild, and occasionally getting pages of a catalog stuck together.

Although, now that I think about it, here at the Impulsive Buy we hardly ever review office supplies and equipment. I believe we don’t review them because they’re kind of boring. Except for staple removers, which make decent S&M toys.

However, the selection in Stooples included many items that would easily cause any quasi-product review blog editor to cream in their pants. Some of my favorites included:

The Pen That Is Mightier Than the Sword for 49 cents

Description from Stooples: Now you can test this adage for yourself. Charge into battle wailing and flailing your pen against master swordsmen, knife-wielding psychos, manicurists with attitude and others armed with sharp weaponry. Not enough of a challenge? Take on Bloods and Crips, Peruvian rebel bases and Libya. Still not enough of a challenge? How ’bout I beat you upside the head with this book.

Versatile Office Nipple Clips for 39 cents

Description from Stooples: Many steel-tempered, nickel-plated binder clips are good for either gripping reports or clamping nipples, but never both. Until now. Our rectangular design holds paper, nipples, with equal efficiency and optimum compression. Durable grasp doesn’t weaken over time or tugging. Option: you may remove arms for permanent binding, but think carefully.

Typo Whip for $29.99

Description from Stooples: Teach your secretary the value of proofreading. Woven strands of correction tape form foot-long whip; allow on-the-spot disciplinary action for forgetting to spell-check. Punish letter-dropping, reverse wording and too much spacing. Horsewhip or cat-o’-nine tails.

Downsizing LSD (Layoff Soother & Depressant) for $29.99 per tablet

Description from Stooples: Delivering news about layoffs is no fun for anyone, but the last thing you need is an irate ex-employee chasing you around a desk with a letter opener. Downsizing LSD keeps things calm. Simply place in coffee (theirs, not yours) and within minutes they’re ready to hear anything. Closing entire office? Downsizing LSD tablets can be placed in company watercoolers. Employ 83% of the local workforce and now you’re moving the entire operation to Guatemala? Seed passing cloud formations with industrial strength LSD, pray for rain, run like hell. Also available: Human Resource Halcyon.

God, I would totally kill for The Pen That Is Mightier Than the Sword, and if I had The Pen That Is Mightier Than the Sword, I could use it to kill someone for The Pen That Is Mightier Than the Sword.

Of course, since Stooples is a parody of an office supply catalog, I can only dream of the stuff I could’ve reviewed — and then in the morning clean up whatever mess I made from dreaming.

(Editor’s Note: Thanks to Adam Najberg, a co-author of the book, for sending me a copy of Stooples. Perhaps this book will give office supply companies ideas and I hope that many of them come to fruition, especially The Pen That is Mightier Than the Sword, because there are a couple of swords I’d like to take down. I’m talking to you, Tommy Lee! Also, go check out the Stooples website.)

Item: Stooples: Office Tools for Hopeless Fools
Purchase Price: FREE
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Pros: Hilarious book. One of the best ways to give a quasi-product review blog editor a boner. Perfect for those who like to look at pretty pictures and not have a lot of words get in the way…or illiterate people.
Cons: Since none of the products can be ordered, it’s one of the best ways to give blue balls to a quasi-product review blog editor. I didn’t come up with the idea.

Hefty Serve ‘n Store

Marvo 31 Comments

After seeing how the Hefty Serve ‘n Store interlocking plates and bowls work, I now have a better understanding of how two adolescent teens with braces making out behind the library could easily get stuck together.

Unfortunately, the Serve ‘n Store plates and bowls didn’t give me a better understanding of how to separate two adolescent teens with braces that got stuck together while making out behind the library. I think only an orthodontist could help me with that.

The purpose of the Serve ‘n Store plastic disposable tableware is to allow you to serve, store, and eat leftovers. Every plate is a lid, and every lid is a plate, locking together like Legos or two adolescent teens with braces making out behind the library.

The whole plate-lid thing sort of confuses me, much like every time I see Latoya Jackson and wonder if it’s really Latoya or if it’s Michael with plastic surgery that makes him look black again. How do I know the lid is actually the lid and not the plate? Someone could easily flip it on me and mess with my mind.

Locking together the Serve ‘n Store plates and bowls are significantly easier than solving a Sudoku puzzle and they are also not as addictive to play with as Sudoku puzzles.

I found the Serve ‘n Store plates very convenient when I wanted to pack away food in single servings, but I also found them inconvenient because they weren’t microwaveable. I could serve, store, and eat food, but I just couldn’t warm it up.

However, after some extra research I found that I may not be able to warm up food with the Serve ‘n Store, but I could entertain with them. If you combine two Serve ‘n Store plates they make a decent frisbee. If you add some bells to your frisbee, it turns into a decent tambourine, and you can pretend to be Cher or any female singer from the 1960s or 1970s.

Besides not being able to put the Serve ‘n Store in the microwave, another thing that bothered me was the irritating sound that the locked plates and bowls made when pulled apart.

But I guess I should be glad that the irritating sound won’t make Biggie and Tupac want to roll over in their graves like Kevin Federline’s upcoming rap album will.

Although when I added an 80s dance beat to the irritating sound, it sounded much better.

It also sounded better when I added an edgy rock beat and a weird house beat.

But the irritating sound became even more disturbing when I added an 80s dance beat, plus a video of me stripping.

(Editor’s Note: Thanks to Charlie Kondek from Hass MS&L for sending me the Hefty Serve ‘n Store to review.)

(Editor’s Note 2: Our friend at Cheap Eats also did a review of this product, which you can read here.)

Item: Hefty Serve ‘n Store
Purchase Price: FREE (suggested retail price $2.69)
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Convenient way to store stuff. Better than Kevin Federline’s upcoming rap album. Combining two plates make a decent frisbee. Combining two plates and some bells make a decent tambourine.
Cons: Can’t microwave. Separating the interlocking plates and bowls causes an irritating sound. Ten-inch plates come in a 15-count pack, so one plate will be lonely. Kevin Federline’s upcoming rap album. People who buy Kevin Federline’s upcoming rap album, all two of them, including his mom and Britney.

REVIEW: Dragon Fire Gum

Marvo 30 Comments

I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up I didn’t want to have Superman’s superhuman strength, Flash’s lightning quick speed, or Wonder Woman’s stupid lasso that made people tell the truth. I wanted the special ability of shooting fire out of my mouth.

Perhaps this desire was influenced by the many Godzilla movies I watched. Or maybe I wanted to be able to roast marshmallows whenever or wherever I wished. Or maybe I wanted to be the reason why people yelled, “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire! We don’t need no water let the motherfucker burn!”

I also came up with a cool name if I ever had the ability to shoot fire out of my mouth. I would’ve called myself, “Hellmouth.”

Although now that I’m older and wiser, I realize that this name would either put fear into the hearts of criminals or make everyone think I had bad breath.

When I received a can of Dragon Fire Gum from Impulsive Buy reader Akiko, who picked it up during her journey to the exotic land called Los Angeles, I thought it would allow me to have the fire-shooting breath to destroy a miniature version of Tokyo that I would’ve built using Legos and Jenga pieces. Instead it allowed me to have cinnamon smelling breath.

Inside the can of Dragon Fire Gum was a slip of paper with the words:

According to ancient oriental beliefs, dragons breathed fire to protect treasures from evil spirits. Dragon Fire’s intense hot cinnamon taste will protect you from evil breath spirits. Each piece of gum is loaded with hot imperial cinnamon and then singed to seal in the hot cinnamon flavor.

Yeah, right. And Calgon laundry detergent is an ancient Chinese secret.

So bad breath is caused by evil spirits and not by garlic, onions, smoking, having food debris trapped in your mouth, or kissing a hooker with missing teeth?

If that’s the case, I don’t need gum or toothbrushes, I need either Holy Water or the Ghostbusters.

The dragon design on the outside of the can was cool. However, the gum on the inside, not so much.

Each Dragon Fire gum looked like a red peanut M&M with wrinkles. It also looked like it had a hard shell, but it didn’t have one.

Remember the “intense hot cinnamon taste” printed on the slip of paper in the Dragon Fire Gum can? Well it was there…sometimes. Some pieces made my mouth feel like there was a party going in it, with fireworks and strippers. However, other pieces also made my mouth feel like there was a party going on in it, except with tea, crumpets, and fully-clothed nuns.

Item: Dragon Fire Gum
Purchase Price: FREE (Received from Impulsive Buy reader Akiko)
Rating: 2 out of 5
Pros: Sugarfree. Cool looking can. Dragon would make a cool tattoo. Parties with fireworks and strippers.
Cons: Inconsistent cinnamon bite. Looks like it has a hard shell, but doesn’t have one. Parties with fully-clothed nuns. My inability to shoot fire from my mouth.

REVIEW: Taco Bell Steak Nachos BellGrande

Marvo 35 Comments

Taco Bell Steak Nachos BellGrande

Come on, Taco Bell! Can’t you do better than this?

Can’t you come up with something better than the Steak Nachos BellGrande?

You’ve come up with some great ideas, but Steak Nachos BellGrande just isn’t a fun name to say.

GORDITA!!!

Look how fun it was to say Gordita.

CHALUPA!!!

Saying Chalupa was also frickin’ fun.

BEAN BURRRRITO!!!

Even saying Bean Burrito was fun, not just because I rolled the R’s and said it in a high-pitched, stereotypical, borderline offensive Hispanic accent, but also because of the alliteration.

Sure, I could roll the R in “BellGrande,” but it still wouldn’t sound very fun because there are too many words and syllables in the name and it also wouldn’t be fun to say, “Yo quiero Steak Nachos BellGrande” in my best Taco Bell commercial chihuahua voice, while ordering in the drive-thru lane.

It’s also not exciting to yell whenever I’m swinging at a pinata.

How about Mucho Nacho? Or Nacho Rancho? Or Steako Greato?

Even some of the ingredients in the Steak Nachos BellGrande have better names, like the carne asada steak and nacho cheese sauce. Okay, the tortilla chips, green onions, tomatoes, sour cream, and refried beans have plain names. But if you add the optional jalapenos, you not only add some heat to the Steak Nachos BellGrande, you also add another ingredient that’s fun to say and you can have fun with Taco Bell employees by asking for the jalapenos phonetically.

The Steak Nachos BellGrande was good. The steak was surprisingly tender and the optional jalapenos gave it a nice kick. However, I think what really made this product tasty was the nacho cheese sauce, which also made the Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme tasty and added a nice crayon orange to the dish.

However, with 770 calories, 41 grams of fat, 7 grams of trans fat, 1230 milligrams of sodium, and enough carbs to make Dr. Atkins weep in heaven, I don’t think I’ll be buying it again. Although, it does have a whopping 10 grams of dietary fiber.

Hey! Maybe it should be called Nacho PoopGrande?

Item: Taco Bell Steak Nachos BellGrande
Purchase Price: $3.59
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Tasty. Steak was surprisingly tender. Nacho cheese sauce is frickin’ addicting. Optional jalapenos gave it some nice heat. Lots of dietary fiber. CHALUPA! GORDITA!
Cons: Boring name. High in bad trans fat and other things.