Ultra Fleecy Fabric Softener

Concept:  3 out of 5
Execution:  1 out of 5
Yeah, but:  It's so fluffy!

The Long Version: Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised at how hard it is to find decent information about fabric softener. After all, it's an industry worth a huge amount of money that involves complex chemicals and heavy perfumes. On one side of the information chasm we have the manufacturers whose only advice is how to use more of their product, while their adversaries love the cliché "chemical-laden". That's a scary phrase that's completely meaningless, as even a glass of pure distilled water is laden with hydrogen and oxygen, which are combustible, reactive, and/or poisonous chemicals that can kill you if not handled correctly.

The foundation of most softeners, ditallow dimethyl ammonium chloride (DTDMAC) (pdf) certainly isn't something I'd want to drink. Norway has it on their list of priority substances to reduce, a list that include[s] substances that are persistent and bioaccumulative, that have serious long-term health effects, or that show high ecotoxicity. The additional additives and other ingredients almost certainly don't improve matters; there's no doubt in my mind that this isn't something I should enjoy pouring down the drain. I compensate for that by adding it only when it will actually be useful - I wash my shirts separately from my jeans in the world's smallest front-load washer - and by using about a fifth of the recommended amount. Even with that level of moderation it still takes care of the static electricity that's endemic in winter.

click here for larger in a new window

But in a market filled with dubious information and spin, sometimes companies rise to the level of art. All bottles of fabric softener have this handy disclaimer on their backs. Essentially, fabric softeners increase fluffiness and flammability, so it should not be used on inherently fluffy fabrics like fleece and terry cloth, or on anything that needs to be treated for flame-resistance, such as "children's sleepwear". Yet the photo on the front of the bottle that I bought looks like a scary aryan robo-baby wrapped up in a fluffy fleece blanket. I have to admit that this absurdity is the only reason why I picked this particular brand out of the noise of indistinguishable products.

WTF, Ultra Fleecy?

last updated 12 jan 2011

Gary Fong Collapsible Lightsphere Packaging

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 0 out of 5
Yeah, but: Just the wrap, man, just the wrap.


The Long Version: Gary Fong is the Ken Rockwell of lighting modifiers. And that's fine - this review doesn't have anything to do with either one of them, or even the actual product that's in the Gary Fong Lightsphere® Collapsible™ box. It's not even about how the hell someone managed to trademark the word 'Collapsible™'. And for the record, yes, the Gary Fong Lightsphere® Collapsible™ does what it says it does. Two ping-pong balls taped to the top of your flash would also do what the Gary Fong Lightsphere® Collapsible™ does, but that's not the point. This review is just about the package that it comes in.

The box itself is thin black cardboard with a sticker that carries all of the text, graphics, and photos. This is a cost-effective way to create the multi-lingual packaging that's needed for international sales, and the box follows the current trend of keeping it as small as possible. It does fall down a bit by having plastic shrink-wrap around it, but that may add enough integrity to let them use a lighter grade of boxboard. There are also some style points involved by having the actual Lightsphere® Collapsible™ wrapped in coloured tissue paper instead of more unnecessary plastics. But that's hardly enough to motivate a review: the photos are where things start to get interesting.

We see an attractive model in the advertising version of the classic Comedy / Tragedy masks, known as the 'before' and 'after' photo. The one labeled "Without" shows a woman who's rehearsing for her passport photo, while the "With" looks like she's just heard a funny joke from a good friend. Sure, it's a blatant and obvious attempt to manipulate the viewer, but it's so clumsily done that it's impossible to take offense. Besides, given what these things look like when they're stuffed on top of a speedlight, I'm sure that lots of people really do laugh and smile when they see them. But let's look closer, shall we?

(make it bigger)

Here's the "Without / Sans" photo. It's a pretty standard straight-blast flash photo: the hallmark of novice camera users and really abysmal wedding photography. Nothing too remarkable here, so let's move on to the "With / Avec" image.

(make it bigger)

It's a huge improvement, verging on school portrait quality. It's so good, it's almost impossible to believe that a single on-camera flash could possibly create these results. Take a good look at the catchlights in her eyes in this photo, and compare them to the "Without / Sans" image. It really is impossible to believe that this was taken using a single on-camera light source, no matter how artfully it's bounced. In fact, the soft caressing shadows look even better than in the similar images on the Gary Fong Product Page, where our attractive model has only one catchlight reflected in her eyes.


Fancy that.