So I buy this “bathtub fingerpaint” set for my daughter.
It includes: five small (3 oz.) jars of “paint” (really colored liquid soap), one fish-shaped cheapo sponge “eraser”, and a hand-shaped “palette”.
Cost: US $12.95
Of course, she goes through the jars in a week.
Today, I went to the grocery store and bought Lever 2000 liquid soap ($4.39) and food coloring ($1.29) and made five jars of vibrant “paint” with enough soap left over for another 10 jars and enough food coloring for another 50.
I realize that the “inventors” are just trying to make a buck, but I feel totally misled. I was expecting water soluble paints and I got colored soap that an adult would be hard pressed to paint with.
Well, I sent away for the “X-ray vision glasses.” I was convinced I would be able to use them to see through girls’ clothes. I was so excited, and then so disappointed when they didn’t work.
I ordered two tie-dye t-shirts from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with two different slogans: “If you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t really there.” and “If it’s too loud, you’re too old.” I got the second one, but instead of the first I got “Turn the crap down! -Everybody’s Mother”. I tried for about two months to get the other one, but with no success. They wouldn’t even return my calls. After the first week it was more about the principle of the thing, but it still bugged me.
Also, though this is not retail related, I once bought a reel-to-reel tape recorder at a garage sale for $20. Very cheap, and from a neighbour no less. They assured me it worked. I wanted to try it out there but they promised me. Took it home, it turned on but wouldn’t work. I took it back, but they basically said I should have known better buying it from a garage sale. This was a neighbour, and I was a kid. To this day it still pisses me off, though not as much. I still live in the same area too.
Sue, if you feel ripped off with the fingerpaint soap, you ought to see how much companies rip off consumers for a lot of other things.
I usually read the “live frugally” type web sites for good tips and ideas. They have things like recipes for really cheap home-made bath salts and stuff.
Honey, I spend money like a drunken French whore. I’m just pissed that I spent $13 on nada. If it was great, I would have been extolling it’s virtues. It just wasn’t.
Sea Monkeys are cool, you just have to be in the right frame of mind.
You take these little specks (eggs) that have been dry for possibly years and drop them in salt water and watch them spring to life in a matter of hours. You can “train” them by taking the container into a dark room and shining a flashlight in the water and watch them chase it around.
Then after about five minutes, when you are bored shitless with them, you can strain them out of the salt water and watch your guppies go wild chasing them around the aquarium.
BTW, Sea Monkeys= Brine Shrimp eggs. You can get them in any pet store as fish food for about 1/10th the price, but they’re still cool.
A vintage furniture store was going out of business. I bought a SMALL (8 inches in diameter) table fan. I was assured that the wiring was new. Always the savy shopper, I made them pug it in. She did, for exactly 2 seconds, enough to get one roation on the fan. I plunked down $30 and took it home. Plugged it in, and sparks flew and it shorted my fuse. I opened it up, and the wiring was obviously NOT new, and I could see many frayed wires. Bastards. So now I have a very expensive table fan decoration. But it looks cool.