Heading into the weekend, there were two party-related stories that caught my eye. TechCrunch’s MG Siegler had an interesting post a new app for the iPhone, called Power Music Hour. Sounds innocuous enough.
“Power Music Hour is a fun new way to listen to music from your iTunes library! Just select a playlist and Power Music Hour will play a different song each minute! Power Music Hour can play the middle minute, or a random minute of each song and has an optional whistle noise to let you know that the song is changing (sometimes those remixes can fool you!).
Just in case an hour isn’t the perfect length, you can optionally choose to play for 30 or 100 minutes instead!”
The description sounds pretty darn innocuous too. But here’s the thing, according to Siegler, “anyone who has been to college in the past decade will know exactly what this app is for: A drinking game.”
Apparently, if the description had subtitles, the translated version would describe a game where you must drink one shot of beer every minute for an hour (there are variations).
“Yes, that’s 60 shots of beer. Yes, that will get you very, very drunk. But again, this app never once mentions drinking in its description, and instead implies that it may just be fun to listen to music for a minute at a time. I love it.”
Siegler did a little legwork and found out that there are many “Power Music Hour” types of apps in the iTunes store and none of them say anything about a drinking game in their description.
“We all know what these apps are for, even if they found a rather brilliant loophole in Apple’s App approval system: Simply create a drinking game app, don’t mention the drinking part, and you’ll get a nice 4+ rating, rather than a much more restrictive one (or possibly even rejection).”
From implied drinking, let’s move to something over the top that has taken a sort of “in your face” approach.
I was watching College Game Day on Saturday morning when a commercial came on that I thought was a spoof… like one of those Saturday Night Live commercials (Shimmer! It’s a floor wax! It’s a dessert topping!).
But a quick check online confirmed that indeed, it was for real. I’m talking about the Margaritaville® ExplorerCordless Frozen Concoction Maker. Apparently for $299 (Free Shipping), you can buy a “portable powerhouse” for whipping up frozen drinks.
The fact that the ad shows a young man in a football jersey pouring a drink for a young lady has tailgate party written all over it.
Check out the specifications…
- Powerful DC shaving and blending motors produce restaurant quality frozen drinks without a cord.
- Heavy-duty 18 volt Ni-Cd battery pack creates up to 60 drinks on a single charge.
- Pre-programmed settings automatically shave ice and blends up to 36 ounces of frozen drink.
- Fully cordless operation satisfies your thirst for frozen drinks – anywhere, anytime.
- Rugged design, premium graphite finish with mango accent color, durable oversized controls.
- Charging base and one 18V battery pack included.
No alcohol mentioned. At least they are direct about it being for parties and the brand is Margaritaville. You connect the dots.
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It seems to me that if there were a remake of “Animal House,” Bluto and the Delta House gang would probably be way into using these “party helper” products. No doubt, some of the humor would come from making sure the frozen concoction maker and iPod/iPhone that the Power Hour Music app is running on aren’t inadvertently destroyed.
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