Float On

A product like this creates an interesting conundrum for us, here in the copy department, and it’s best illustrated by the first ‘about this item’ bullet point on Amazon:

Floats For Easy Water Recovery. Great For Activities Such As Fishing Or Hiking, Or For Emergencies Including Storms And Hurricanes.

There are some products we sell, like BlissLights projectors or Halloween decorations, that are merely fun and completely incapable of any practical application. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, there are super practical and devoid of any fun. Your emergency tents and ponchos, or even just power banks and generators.

Then, there are products like this.

A flashlight that floats? That’s something you can use in situations across the delightful-to-harrowing spectrum. And yet, we want to avoid the tonal dissonance presented in the quoted text above. “Perfect for relaxing and/or fending for your life!” Yikes!

So which side do we highlight?

Well, we’d prefer to keep things positive. Great for hiking. Great for fishing at night. Great for a romantic midnight kayak ride. Great for exploring the beach caves with your ascot-wearing friend, your purple-dress-wearing friend, your nerdy friend, your stoner friend, and your stoner friend’s Great Dane who can sort of talk, all to prove that the Beast of Beacon Beach is little more than a local hotelier trying to scare people away from his counterfeit cassette tape operation.

But the depressing truth? You’re more likely to use these for the other kind of scenario.

Like, let’s say, you get hit with a big storm that knocks out the power, and there’s water coming into the basement, and you need to go down and get stuff before it gets destroyed. You don’t want to be worrying about where you set down your flashlight in a situation like that.

Obviously, we’ve chosen a pretty extreme example. But the point stands: you will probably be dealing with some water-and-darkness-related nuisance more often than you’re hiking, or night fishing, or mystery solving. So it makes sense to really lean into that angle, from a sales perspective.

But what a fucking bummer!

So, what will be our pitch? There’s only one, as far as we’re concerned. That’s right, friends. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again.

You can never have too many lights!