8 Ways to Sunday

Blendtec is a little company that makes kitchen appliances, most notably some uncommonly powerful blenders. Faced with the question of how to market their blenders, Blendtec decided to do something… different. You’d best take a moment to steady yourself before pressing the “play” button, especially if you own an iPod.

Blendtec started a website called Will It Blend? and posted video after video of their blender turning rake handles into sawdust, marbles into glass powder, an iPod into metal and plastic shavings, and even doing a few normal blender things as well. The website was a smash hit, and Blendtec’s sales have soared. You can watch a video interview with the marketing mastermind behind the campaign to learn more about how he got the idea, and how it’s worked out so far.

The videos themselves are mesmerizing. There’s a pleasant retro-cheesiness to the proceedings, which is only amplified by the theme music. Host Tom Dickson comes across like an agreeable — but obviously twisted — culinary mad scientist. He’s like Mr. Rogers, Mr. Wizard, Dr. Strangelove, and Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor all rolled into one.

The outrageous demonstrations only get better the more of them you watch. By the time I’d seen a half dozen, I found myself cracking up whenever the vaporous remnants of the blender’s latest victim caused Dickson to earnestly warn, “Don’t breathe this.”* The Will It Blend? website has started selling “Tom Dickson is my Homeboy” t-shirts, but I’m holding out for a shirt with a smoking blender on the front that says “Don’t breathe this.”

If you like cooking, gently surreal humor, or random destruction (who doesn’t?) then you owe it to yourself to check these videos out. If you’ve got a suggestion for something to blend next, Blendtec would like to know. They’ve already fulfilled several blending requests, and you could be next!

(Props: Pogue’s Posts)