miracle socks

35 BELOW SOCKS?????

This morning I saw a commercial on television for 35 below socks, to say it got my attention is an understatement. When I got to my office I brought up the site and printed out the 3 pages available. I scrutinized the pages to find out what company is selling these items. I am not entirely sure if it is HIP INNOVATIONS LLC located in Boca Raton, Florida, a company that makes replacement hips or PRODUCT TREND LLC located in Williston, VT, that I seem to believe is a marketing company. Both companies are shown on the printed copy. Phone calls to each company give you an answering machine requesting that you leave a message. That is something I will not do, because if these companies are as large as they show on their web sites they should have people available between 9 and 5 in my opinion.

I did look over the HIP web site for the product and came across their testing and I found that “product testing” is done in the “cadaver studies” area. I could not find the 35 below product as well. As for Product Trend there was nothing as well.

Now for these miracle socks! They are made from nylon and “aluminized threads”. Obviously the socks are knitted. Three pair for $19.99 plus shipping. They say and I quote; “35 below socks are perfect for indoors (which I agree with) or outdoors (which I also agree with if the temperature is 45 degrees above freezing versus 35 degrees below zero).

They claim a lot more about the socks as to when to wear them but it is all nonsense.

As we head towards winter each and every year it seems someone comes up with a new super duper product that is going to keep a person warm on the coldest days. What you will discover if you happen to do the research is that the companies that sell these products never do any research testing their products during the previous winter so they have some evidence of their products ability to do what they claim. That also goes for the companies that manufacture winter clothing items that are available in stores from major corporations such as TNF, Patagonia, Columbia, etc. They are all about hyping the newest and greatest from season to season as they discover what was made the last season didn’t work as they claimed.

One other aspect of what all of these companies don’t do is have the owners actually try the products that their product engineers (?) come up with, or what is even worse is the fact that they do not even ask the product engineers (?) if they have actually tried the product for the conditions they believe it will perform. They hire (pay) people who chose to live in the outdoors to use, test the products and of course since the company pays them they tell the product engineers (?) whatever it is that will support them when the product engineers (?) go to their bosses with the new product. I call this the blind leading the blind!!!!!!!!!!!

Who known maybe these other companies are doing as HIP does and using cadavers to test their products. Of course is there a difference between a cadaver and a copper manikin?