Eco-friendly vibrator – branding at its climactic best
This is no joke. A sustainable vibrator is coming soon …
Only the Swedes could pull off the branding coup of the year in the sex toy market. Funny, clever and explosive, this is equal to a premature ejaculation turning into a long-term relationship. It started out as an April Fool’s joke and after fooling everyone, the company is now working on designing an actual vibrator branded as “GÄSM” – your eco-friendly vibrator made from 100% recycled materials. It just might make customers a little more relaxed knowing they are helping the environment while helping themselves.
Steve Thompson, global head of marketing for Lelo said this about the original April Fool’s idea. “The best way we thought we could do that (April Fool’s joke) was to faux launch a product that they wouldn’t imagine and they’d never seen before.” It worked. It was forest green and made from recycled wood pulp and car tires and powered by a “hand-cranking” Allen wrench. Like Ikea products – not quite the same – it was to be sold as separate pieces and you had to put them together. They even used IKEA-like font and packaging.
The internal sales staff, the press and a lot of customers were fooled – and disappointed. So much so that the company is now hoping to launch the real “GÄSM” in the next six months – to orgasmic-like, sustainable success.
While waiting to be eco-friendly, shop for other Lelo pleasure products
The Swedish company says they don’t sell sex toys; they sell “pleasure objects.” Their “massagers” and “stimulators” are in sex toy stores, sure, but they’re also at Brookstone, where “massager” usually means something you use on your back. They make a vibrator (the Inez) that retails for $15,000, I think it’s gold-plated.
“People are the worst”
Coming 2027
My personal history is the stuff they write books about. And that's what I am doing. The working title, "Chains of My Father: Marry White."
"The ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds." - Barack Obama
This perspicacious line from the Prologue of Barack Obama's "Dream from My Father" wrenched my aspiration into action. I started writing, furiously. Unlike Obama's perspective, my pain had been for the opposite reason: I was not seen by whites as a "tragic mulatto," rather I lived every day of my childhood hoping whites were not "searching my eyes for some telltale sign" that I WAS mulatto. This is my story.
It's historical fiction because I cannot find enough records to substantiate all facets of the story. I've combed the genealogy, traveled to my father and grandparents' birthplace, walked the graveyards, searched the churches and ... well, all the facts aren't there. I've written three books based on the genealogy of other families but my ancestors emerged from a journey of too much slavery and too few records.
In Grenada, West Indies, my paternal, 3x great grandmother was a "freed slave" and my grandmother, Amelia, was born to a mixed race slave named Mary (we do not know her last name) and a white, French plantation owner, Fredric de Poullain. Amelia was raised in the "Big House" and in adulthood attempted to escape her black heritage by disowning her mother, telling her, "Get out and never come back." Amelia, the mother of twelve children, enshrined the family in her ancestors' commandment, "Marry white." Many did, including my father marrying mother a lovely, white, Anglo-Saxon protestant born in England. They met in Canada where my dad studied and became a doctor.
It has taken seven generations to be free of the stigma of black heritage but today my children embrace it. Unfortunately, the past 250 years have been a wasteland of bigotry and racism, but, on closer look, we see not only the brutality, fear and violence but the self-respect, dignity, love, perseverance and indomitable spirit.
The depth of historic perspective and the human inspiration has created a trilogy and as of this writing I have only arrived at the beginning of the 20th century. 1900 is the year my father was born and the beginning of Book III, and he's pushing me to make sure our story is published by the summer of 2027.
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