Church of the Customer Blog
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July 30, 2007
Products of mirth
Laura sent us this picture, which has been swimming across the web for the past few months. Do a quick search on "High Tide Heels" and you'll find the picture often produces one of three reactions:
- Are those for real?
- Those are stupid! Someone has too much time on their hands.
- Those are cool! Where can I buy them?
Indications are they're not for sale. They seem to be someone's art project. A project of mirth, designed to elicit laughter. I laughed.
It would be hard to imagine a child looking at that photograph and saying "someone has too much time on their hands." A child would probably imagine the possibilities of high-heeled flippers.
That's the thing about mirth, especially with children: they enjoy mirth without shame or guilt, whether it's the delicious ridiculousness of green eggs and ham or a knock-knock joke they repeat 20 times to grandma. Mirth is joy. People with a happy infectiousness spread their joy. To a little kid, mirth isn't stupid. Mirth is a license to share. Mirth spreads.
A company that demands quantifiable proof and evidence of an idea's value before dedicating a few days' time sketching it out probably lacks the license of imagination to produce a change-the-world product. In their world, mirth is unproductive.
So who knows... maybe the crazy idea of High Tide Heels will spread just enough to become a real product and sell like crazy.
It happened with some other crazy shoes.
Other blogs that reference Products of mirth:
» The Importance of Mirth from Escape Adulthood
If youre new to this blog, heres what its all about. You may also want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Several weeks ago I came across a post on the Church of the Customer blog entitled, Products of Mirth. It feat... [Read More]
Don't forget "Heelys" (http://www.heelys.com/). Not only did an odd idea for a shoe, based largely on the "Strap-on Skates/Blades" that attached with Velcro to shoes, end up being a big hit with a wide range of youth, but it also spawned a clothing line, helmet line, and a youth sub-culture.
Here is a site with more strange products:
http://www.strangenewproducts.com/
wtf?? i wonder whose brillian idea it was to come up with those shoes/flippers...slippers??
anyway, check out this really cool site thats totally addicting.
www.lost.eu/5ebf5
woot...you have been invited
