Posted 12/2/2011

HONEY, THEY SHRUNK THE GOODS!

As I pulled on my new athletic socks, I was startled to see my hairy ankles showing through.  I could even count the freckles.  The ankle part of the sock looked like my grandmother's old doilies.  A few years ago, the socks were solid cotton.  But now it's a weird mixture of cotton and air.

It was like the experience I had trying to buy my wife a gold pendant for our anniversary.  I was looking for a "hub cap" design about an inch and a half in diameter.  But now all the pendants are thin circles with thinner gold designs inside.  Like the sock makers, the jewelers are now selling air.

Talking about selling air, the airlines have shrunk their fleets.  Now we are packed in like merchandise in an air freight carrier.  Last time I was in a middle seat, my suit jacket got pressed on both sides.

It looks like the garment industry and the fashion designers have ganged up to shrink the size of women's jackets, which don't even pretend to cover the fanny anymore.  The much shorter jackets flatter only the anorexic models who have no fannies.  The merchants are still selling at long jacket prices, of course.

Even worse, the clothing makers have shrunk the zippers in women's slacks.  Getting in and out of slacks with three-inch zippers requires a great deal of agility – like standing on one leg as long as a whooping crane. 

What if the fashion of three-inch zippers is applied to men's slacks?  We would have an anatomical disaster on our hands. 

The latest men's fashions in New York are full of high-priced air.  Jackets no longer cover the behind, there are fewer pockets, and some dress styles show pants that don't even reach the ankles.  Buy a $2,000 suit in New York and you will look like you outgrew it two years ago. 

New wallets are much smaller than they were five years ago.  The leather makers are selling air where leather once proudly stood.   While we have more to squeeze into our slacks, we have much less to stuff into a wallet.

The paper makers are really into selling air.  Many paper towels are embossed so as to make you think they are thicker and more absorbent.  Less paper plus more air equals more profit.  The technique worked so well with paper towels that it has migrated onto toilet tissue brands.  Somebody's advertising bears are even joking about it on TV.

Have you ever tried to buy a thick cotton handkerchief lately?  I keep looking for the old GI handkerchiefs I had in the army – the ones that could contain a huge cold.  Today's flimsy handkerchiefs are done in by two blows.  They seem to be one-third cotton and two-thirds air.  I have a friend who blows his nose in old t-shirts, even though it disgusts his wife.

Has anything in the world shrunk more than the time your doctor spends with you?  The next thing we will see in medicine is the application of Henry Ford's old "moving assembly line."  You enter the office, sit on a moving conveyer belt while the staff, one at a time, does medical things to you as you whiz by.  The last stop is the doctor, who says "You're fine" as the conveyer belt whisks you out to the parking area. 

The lawn sprinkler has really changed. Once made of strong steel and solid plastics, it was heavy enough to resist the pressures of a flowing garden hose.  You put it down, set the area mechanism, went to the house, and turned on the faucet.  But now the airy-light sprinkler is so flimsy that the garden hose overpowers it, constantly changing the sprinkler's placement.  Running in and out of the spray to make adjustments, I was soaked by the time I got it right.  Two neighbor kids came over to play with me.
 
The old, reliable wooden match is no more.  No longer can you strike it with your thumbnail like John Wayne use to do, or on your shoe like Humphrey Bogart.  In fact, it's hard to strike the modern match in humid weather, no matter what kind of surface you use.  The match makers have shrunk the head down to where it looks more like a swollen neck.  Sometimes it takes three matches before you get one to light up.  In today's movie, the hero is freezing to death in Alaska struggling with only two matches in a stiff wind and.....

The TV people have shrunk the entertainment part of a show and greatly expanded the time devoted to commercials and promotions.  Not satisfied with that, they now sneak visual commercials and promos onto the lower left side of your screen while the show is going on.  Pretty soon your TV screen will be one hour of commercials with the show snuck in occasionally in the lower left portion of your screen. 

The cereal makers all seem to provide us with boxes which are full of air at the top.  This is particularly irritating with the infant starter brands. Someone at General Mills told me that half of all the Cheerios ever produced ended up on the kitchen floor.

Shrinking products and selling air is not new, of course.

Way back when you could buy a candy bar for a nickel, the candy makers expanded or shrunk the size of their bars according to the price of ingredients.  But they always increased the size back to the proper level when ingredient costs fell.

But today's companies have really become hooked on the profitability of selling air.  I am afraid we're in for a long run of ever-shrinking products.

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