What Were They Thinking? — You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round Like a Mango, Baby

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

This standup advertisement for Absolut Mango showed up on bar tables in 2009.  It features a cutout with a mango on a wire, so you can spin it around; the mango is whole on one side and cut into cubes (for easier eating) on the other.

It’s a clever enough idea, I suppose.  Give idle bar patrons something to do with their hands and they will imprint better on your product.  (Although, I’m not sure this wa sa great idea for gay bars.  Looks way to vaginal to me.)

The problem is in the construction.  As you can see from the picture, the wire isn’t centered in the mango, so when you spin it halfway around, it blocks up on the side of the cutout.  So the spinner doesn’t spin.

(“But this might just be a one-off manufacturing defect,” you say?  Yes, might be.  But I’ve seen this standup three times, in two different states, and all of them had the problem.  That points to a design flaw.)