threemonkeys | Copy copy (Reply)

Did you know the Chinese make cheap fake kiwifruit? But did you know they make cheap copies of their own cheap stuff too? A few months ago, I bought one of those clip-on LED reading lights from one of the $2 stores about town. It was quite cool as it looked like something you could use for scratch modelling as an engine pod on a spaceship - complete with light effects. It works very well for what is essentially a cheap toy. So I was in another $2 shop today and I saw what appeared to be the same lights on sale. So I bought another one. But when I got it home it didn't work. A dissection showed that it was much more shoddily made than the original and was missing a vital component - the internal switch mechanism. So, a cheap knock-off of what was just a piece of cheap ephemera in the first place. Isn't the free marketplace wonderful.