A Meh-rathon of Sweet Meh-mories

This is a 2-pack of Vanderbilt Home 8L Stainless Steel Waste Bins. You either know what that is, or can jump in the forum to ask other people about it.

Why aren’t we giving you more info? Well, we weren’t sure what to write for the Meh-rathon so we decided to look at some past Meh write-ups for inspiration. (You can find a random one here, if you want.) Unfortunately, all that did was make us nostalgic and maybe a little teary-eyed. And then the boss was all “Where’s the write-ups, writer dude?” and we panicked and… uhh… Please enjoy this classic write-up about an entirely different product! Also, feel free to share in the forum if you find one you liked or forgot about or missed entirely.

Not many people know this, but Sabre pepper spray is the result of one of those business accidents you hear about.

You know, like how Silly Putty was a failed attempt to develop a synthetic rubber substitute? Or how the Kardashians were never intended to be known beyond whatever department store’s fragrance counter they were supposed to work behind?

It’s like that. Not many people know this. It’s the 100 percent true story of how one chance mistake led to a market-changing product breakthrough.

What had happened was that originally the company name was Pepper, and they were trying to create a self-defense spray which people could use to discharge an aerosol stream of antique military sabres at potential assailants, which would deter them at the very least and more likely shred them into heaps of gory mash.

It’s like – do you know the D&D spell Cloud of Daggers? Picture like that. Except with instantaneous duration, and a smaller area of effect, and instead of daggers, it’s sabres. It was to be called “Pepper Sabre Spray.”

But see, and not many people know this, but see, it turned out to be extremely dangerous to store dozens of bladed weapons under sufficient pressure that they could be carried in a keychain-sized canister. Ruptures were a constant problem, and grievously harmful to the user when they occurred.

Also, when loaded with a full charge of Damascus steel scimitars, prototypes of Pepper Sabre Spray canisters were impractically heavy.

So actually this company, Pepper, was just going to give up on the whole idea, and one of the guys heading up the project wrote a report about why it would never work, but there was this typographical error on the cover page, and the words “pepper” and “sabre” were transposed, and everyone was like “wait, pepper spray? Like other companies make? That actually makes a ton more sense.”

So they retooled, and renamed the company, and that’s how they came up with Sabre Pepper Spray.

Not many people know that.