How to Kill a Potentially Profitable Product

Leen’s suddenly become involved in selling sanitary pads through some kind of MLM thingy, which frightens me in oh so many ways. Actually, I think it’s quite clever: instead of selling overrated nutritional supplements and other things people might think are great initially but eventually (or quickly) lose interest in, she’d be selling something that is more a necessity than a novelty. Still, there is a part of me that thinks MLM and sanitary pads shouldn’t appear in the same sentence (and it doesn’t help that these things are supposedly full of anions, little negatively-charged particles that can—according to the ‘scientists’—do for your sweet spot what Herbalife is supposed to do for your gut).

Well, now I can safely say that there are certain other words that should never, ever appear in the same sentence; in fact, one of them definitely shouldn’t appear in a company’s promotional materials:

This, my dear friends, is what can be found in the colourful, slick, professional-looking booklets that accompany the sanitary pads (and, as you can see from the picture, the little ‘test card’ that comes with them). The company responsible for all this is in Shenzen, China. Apparently they blew their entire budget on everything but a good English translation. I think I’m going to contact them and offer them my services, otherwise their plan for world domination will be hurt by the crappy English and die a horrible death as soon as someone sees the word cunt. And imagine if a Malaysian with a rather poor grasp of English tries to market this stuff here, and when they go to a potential client whose English is not bad they horrify the person beyond belief by reading out the instructions, all with the confidence of someone who knows what they’re talking about. Can you imagine the horror?

Anyway, Leen and I have been laughing almost uncontrollably at this since she first noticed it in the booklet. It was so funny, in fact, that I just had to share it. But really, I’m sorry if anyone is offended by that nasty little word, which I’d say is now considered to be the most explicit of all English words, even more explicit than the still-awesome-but-way-overexposed fuck.

Perhaps nastiest of all is that this is the second post in a row here in my blog in which the word cunt has featured prominently. Heh. That is a little disturbing. Well then, I promise my next post will be…nah, I won’t even say it. Heh.