Better Living Through Random Products

Has anyone else seen those ads on TV for the Dyson Air Blade?

Older Dyson ads always struck me as funny because of the way the earnest inventor tells you he spent years creating his high-tech masterpiece of a ... vacuum. Hundreds of prototypes, untold vacations and episodes of What Not to Wear missed, all in the name of reinventing an appliance that, as far as I can see, works reasonably fine in its cheaper, more technologically outdated, non-Dyson version. It takes a special combination of brains and passion for cleaning to make something like this. To then explain the details of invention in such excruciating detail in TV ads makes it obvious that Dyson truly believes you too have been suffering over inefficient vacuum suckage all of your life.

And now James Dyson is back with another product I didn't realize needed improvement: rest room hand dryers. Or as Dyson dubs it, the Air Blade. He says the problem with other hand dryers is that people would rather wipe their hands on their pants than use them. So inefficient! So unhygienic! Dyson, random appliance messiah, to the rescue!

At first I couldn't figure out why the Air Blade was being advertised on prime time cable TV. It is a product made for public restrooms, which the average television viewer has no part in outfitting with new equipment. But then I realized that selling the Air Blade is likely only half the point for Dyson. Those ads are a public service announcement for fellow OCD sufferers like himself.

I can only assume he'll be bringing us a nose vacuum (aka Kleenex 2.0) next year.