My children are a little destructive. It seems as though anything in our house that costs more than $200.00 is doomed to be broken by them. It's the $200.00 threshold.
If you are a DVD player, your life expectancy here at the Genuine household is well below average, but of course a few weeks longer than the warranty.
If you are a computer, you can bet they will find a way to pull out a USB port and cram it back in, or open and close a CD/DVD tray so many times it is exhausted and no longer works. "Can somebody tell me what happened to the E drive?"
If you are a TV in this house, you are more than likely not going to see the next generation of VCR or DVD player, because after a few days of subjective use by the Genuine children renders your screen useless except for that little white lines and grey area. But the sound seems to work fine.
If you are a CD player that is used to play Children's songs, or those nice classical music CD's that baby is supposed to be smarter after listening to, your eyeball is about a week old when it gets its first damage.
To all of you electronic engineers out there that want to get on my good side, could you please use my children as your product testers before I spend $200 + on your items? You can come try out your products here anytime. I would be happy to put them through the Genuine test. Perhaps I need to start buying all my electronics from Fisher Price.
We can make lenses for eyeglasses that are scratch free but of the $800 worth of Disney DVD's that I have only about thirty seconds play before the damage is so bad we need to switch out for a newer as yet not scratched disc. I guess I need to start burning extra copies for the playing disc, and keep the originals under lock and key as the master.
*CRASH*
Please excuse me while I go find out what expensive piece of equipment just met the doom of the my children! Mommy?.....where's your laptop????
Yep, I know how you feel. Those guys at Rocky Mountain Computer in Frederick are making a lot off the kids breaking the computer. But I find the DVD players break on their own.
Some how my kids once managed to totally erase the hard drive on our laptop in just 30 seconds. I turned away and when I turned back the screen was blue and the laptop was making a scary clicking noise. Very very bad.
You know what? You make a really good point, they really SHOULD use kids as product testers fror these products.
On the other hand, they DO now make DVD and CD players for kids - Fisher Price? I imagine so. Maybe that IS the way to go.
Wonder if Consumer Reports would be interested in some of your "research"?
Long time reader. First time poster. At least, I think it's my first time. Anyway, enjoying the blog. Have to ask you one question though. Are are kids related? I'm asking because you just described my kids and their non-love for anything expensive and electronic (or just plain expensive).
My son zapped our nice big TV by turning in on and off a bizillion times. That was a happy day.
hey, that's a good idea. *makes mental note to burn several 'play' copies of every new DVD*
Some one once suggest to me that I should stop what I was doing and operate the machines or insert the DVD myself... i was like yeah, riiiiiight!
Ah, brings back memories. My son destroyed no fewer than 4 CD players (he used to shove the booklets into the carousel), one VCR (put keys into the tape-hole) and ripped the tone arm off a Bang and Olufsen turntable.
He applied stickers to every piece of furniture in the house, put crayons in the baseboard heating units, and completely dismantled an electronic keyboard that was...oh...two weeks old?
If Popeye had an opening for a new nephew, Lucas would have qualified. Easily.
Dh replaced our DVD player a couple weeks ago at Sam's for $30... he said when they are now this cheap, we won't worry about the brand any more!!!