Buying Based on Ersatz Products

I love these mini model tents and sleeping bags at Target that show you what the full-size, real thing looks like. Since Target doesn’t have the floor space to set up a 6-person Coleman tent, they resort to these ersatz substitutes. I wonder how many people can make the conceptual leap?

Second, I recently bought a Belkin recorder to attach to my iPod Nano (it works well, but drains the battery quickly, FYI). It’s a very small device but came in a huge package. Part of the reason for it being so big was that there was a cardboard model of an iPod shown “attached” to the recorder, to give a more obvious sense of how it works. It’s actually well done and quite realistic, I did a double-take when I first got the package in the mail.