Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, and your opinion is as valid as anyone else's... to you. From your response, it'd be safe to assume that you are not the target market for these amazing 'artifacts' from a parallel universe - and that's cool! However, it may interest you to know that there are many collectors out there with a fascination for anything sci-fi, steampunk, or even more specialised, Rayguns. Not to mention actual gun collectors. Designed by the geniuses at Weta Workshop, 'Rayguns' are not seen as 'junk' by many people, but as almost sculptural pieces in their own right. Wired Magazine, and even Playboy also seem to find them fascinating as evidenced by the multi-page spread on Rayguns in their latest magazine issues. Check out the online Wired feature at http://www.wired.com/culture/design/multimedia/2007/05/ff_weta Finally, thank you for your amazing compliment: "The budget might have been small compared to say, Coca Cola's, but it still looks pretty generous for a collectable". I don't know whereabouts in the world you live, but the infomercial was conceived, cast, shot, and all post production was done by us for under US15,000! In fact, in what some of my friends and colleagues down here in NZ thought was a 'Hitchcockian gesture', I am indeed in the opening cocktail party scene, as was our compositor and a bunch of other friends.... for ego reasons? No, merely so we could keep our production budget down.

This looks uncannily like an execution the people at Clemenger BBDO, in Wellington NZ did for a poster / print ad a couple of years ago. However, let's not have any 'premature Badlanding' on this until I've seen if I can get the guys at Clemenger to dig out the image file for it, and details of when / where they ran it.

I'm sorry America, but this story really goes to prove that the terrorists have won the war in the USA. When something that was a harmless outdoor campaign can create total pandemonium, this is proof positive that all terrorists objectives are being achieved. Fear and paranoia is a potent cocktail and in this case paralysed a whole city, undoubtedly causing economic damage. While without doubt, the agency concerned should probably have told the city council what they were doing, it's not as if the campaign was malicious in intent and the items concerned weren't designed to look like bombs as some kind of hoax to mislead the authorities. I'm not belittling the need for vigilance in today's troubled times, and have myself spent 10 years in the military in an earlier life, but this just sad!

Steady on Robbolink, that might be considered very 'cosmetic-surgeryist'!