If you wonder why corporations have been able to take over the world so completely, look no further than us. We’re all, to some degree, advertising susceptible morons. Black Friday has proven this over and over again and there are far too many other examples from around the world of regular people waiting in absurd, days long lines at best and coming to blows at worst in hopes of getting their hands on some company or other’s silly gimmickry.
Today, our bauble of choice is Chinese Starbucks mugs that look like cat paws and show figures when you pour coffee into them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-czZ-BnBSCY
One man wrestled with a woman, who fought back, while another man tried to separate them, according to the Global Times. In another video, a tall man trying to make a purchase holds a mug high while a shorter man jumps like a child trying to grab it out of his hand.
But the worst fight scene, the paper noted, was in a video reported to have been taken outside a Starbucks where a woman brutally kicked a man in the back of the legs as he was being held by several people. Why would that happen? Starbucks was probably a victim of its own success by creating a series of designer cups that had become the talk of the town.Among the various designs, the one with the cat paws in which the figure appears after pouring coffee won the hearts of many. As soon as they went on sale on Tuesday, fans lined up outside a few Starbucks but were disappointed because each store only had a handful of paw mugs and they were quickly sold out.
The hot item was priced at 199 yuan (US$29.78), which also reflected their grey market price online because some buyers were willing to pay anything from 400 yuan to 1,800 yuan for the mug.