Grow Your Own Space Needle!
On my recent trip to Seattle, I wandered around Ye Olde Curiousity Shoppe for a good deal of time. YOCS is a great place for old fortune teller machines, real mummies are on display, among other unusual goods. Most of the store is now dedicated to selling tourists every imaginable item with the word, “Seattle” printed on it. When I saw the $2.95 green Space Needle that grows, I figured I could make room in my wallet for one souvenir. After purchasing my find, it went into my purse, untouched and overlooked, until today.
Today, I was cleaning out my refrigerator and found a 2 liter bottle of Coke, well past its optimum fizziness. This is a great place to grow a Space Needle, at least I hope it is. I had a place to grow it, I just had to plop it in bottle with water. I humored the manufacturer and turned the Space Needle package over to read the directions. Instructions for growing something in water seem pointless, but I needed some good breakfast reading and had already memorized the back of the Rice Krispies Box.
I was delighted to find some terrific Engrish on the back. I once had a room mate who, for a living, would translate Nintendo manuals from Engrish to English and explained to me why it occurred. Essentially, Chinese (in the case of this particular product) is so far different from English, not only in grammar, but the way that they use a completely different set of symbols. It just doesn’t translate straight into a different language seamlessly. I can only imagine that they receive products from the US and laugh identically and our mistakes.
Moving on, here is the label. Enjoy.
If you cannot read the scan:
-Put your growing space needle in a jar or container with full of clean water in room temperature. Then see its growing.
-Please note the temperature of the water is under 35 C
-Do not expect instant result as it takes up to 72 hours for fully expansion
-Take it out of the water and see its shrinking back to original size
-An educative and fun toy
And in 72 hours, we shall see how big it gets!
July 15, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Gotta love the Engrish! I can honestly say I’ve never purchased one of these “Grow your own….” things which is surprising because I am notorious for picking up things that I don’t need. I hope that this one turns out better than some of the ones I’ve seen.
July 15, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Yes, my son had one awhile back that pretty much fell apart into water logged chunks…ew.
July 15, 2008 at 8:41 pm
2 years ago I had a human heart that was promised to “GROW 500 TIMES NORMAL SIZE”.
I was ecstatic, I could build a house out of a plastic human heart!
Packages lie.
July 15, 2008 at 9:40 pm
hey Josh! I am glad that I did not actually crash
July 15, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Did you remember to An educative and fun toy?
July 15, 2008 at 10:10 pm
crap, I hope it still works.
July 16, 2008 at 6:31 am
Me too Kristianne, Me too..
July 16, 2008 at 12:47 pm
That almost sounds kinky…
I’m so educative.
July 17, 2008 at 1:22 am
I can’t handle this waiting, pull it out and show us your space needle!
July 17, 2008 at 7:02 am
…72 hours for fully expansion doho
July 17, 2008 at 7:10 am
72 hours can’t come soon enough. Is it time yet?
How about now?
Time yet?
Almost?
July 17, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Try plopping a half a Cialis in there just to help with the…ummm…expansion.
Can’t wait for the end results.