BlagBack Day 4: Something Old, Something New

Whilst I continue to encourage PR companies to donate their unwanted product samples to our charity auction, one of the problem with donating many of my own free products is that well, you wouldn’t want them. For example the simplehuman bin has been filled with rubbish for over a year and as for any cosmetics they’re either used up completely or way past their open dates. Food is no better, again either consumed or past its date (in some cases before we’d even had chance to eat them).

Although that rules two categories out of our past glory days it still leaves many more, and it is from these we will draw today’s additions to the auction:

The Good Book


Eventually we were always going to receive ‘The Good Book’ to review, but this isn’t it. Someone’s cut a ruddy big hole in the middle of it, and smuggled inside a hip flask. Very sneaky! Of course the first clue that something isn’t quite right is the Latin inscription on the front “Cogito Sumere Potum Alterum” which when translated actually says “I think I’ll have another drink”! Thanks Suck UK

Type and Write Pad


Whilst it won’t tuck in your shirt for you the Type and Write stand will help you sit up straight and write better by giving you a writing stand that will allow you to write in a way that has the best effect on your back. You can also position a laptop on the stand to give yourself an elevated position for typing out emails, drawing pie charts etc. Thanks Thinking Gifts.com.

The Quadrilateral


This tricky puzzle had us baffled on review, so much so we couldn’t even complete it. The basic premise is simple. Four rings are connected by a range of colored strings and your goal is to free them from the other rings. But the strings are too short to make it easy for you, good luck. Thanks The Mad Cow Company.co.uk

Turtle Bags

Corporate Social Responsibility is everywhere these days. It concerns the onus placed on companies to act in an Environmentally and Ethically sound way, and in no bigger area has this affected the consumer recently than with plastic bags. Here's Solution Number One... Thanks Turtle Bags

Today sees the first day back to work for many PR firms, here’s hoping they will join us in the donations. Who will be first? – mike@blagman.co.uk

BlagBack Day One

The principle behind BlagBack is simple. I ask a few companies for unwanted product samples, and offer to review them or the company behind them. It’s what got me 250 products in the past, only this time I’d also be raffling off every product I receive in January in a charity auction.

The tricky thing is, once you mention a charity people want to know a lot more about what you’re doing, why they should care, how it will affect their corporate image etc. Things become messy. Thankfully all of this is explained here.

So I thought that to start the ball rolling I’d put my money where my mouth is and donate a ton of my own blags to the auction. In doing so I hope to encourage companies, PR agencies and journalists with unwanted product review samples to say “we don’t need these samples stuffing up the office any more, why not get rid of them and get some exposure for our company as well.”.

So for day one here’s five products you will see in the auction (don’t worry I’ll be donating lots more in the days to come), all of which were attained through me spending no money of my own which will now be sold for charity. I like to think of it as ‘from blags to riches…’

AZBO's

Although a strange blag, the AZBO's were interesting for their quantity alone. Six figures will be included in the auction which are brilliant bits of satire ranging from chubby men to tarty women to blingged up rappers. Nice, if unusual gifts. Value: £60. Thanks Nemesis Now

Eddingtons: Squirrel Nut Cracker

Life is strangely poetic at times. After seeing the Nutcracker ballet I was chuffed when a mere few days later an actual Nutcracker should pop through the door from Eddingtons. Even better I’d missed out on buying a Nutcracker at the show so this product was already in my good books on arrival. Thanks Eddingtons

Go! Go! Asian

Generally when a product arrives I can take one look at the packaging and ascertain straight away what it’s for and how to use it. So when “Go! Go! Asian, Koi Garden Green Tea Antioxidant” arrived I wasn’t at all sure what to do on name alone. Maybe our auction winner will be? Here's hoping. Thanks Go! Go! Beauty

eJay Virtual Sounds 1-3

There used to be a point where every video game included a sound test mode where you could listen to second long sound clips from the game. So you’d hear Sonic grab a ring or Mario go “hoo-hoo I got it”. Playing Virtual Sounds is almost exactly the same experience, a sequence of sound clips you can play one by one. Thanks eJay

The O.C Game

Officially licensed board games seem to be everywhere these days. They seem to magically fill the void between seasons and sequels by letting you act out the lives of your favourite characters and invent your own plot lines. The OC Game on the other hand takes another approach and instead of giving you a fantasy scenario to develop it chooses to test your knowledge of the first few seasons of the show. Thanks re:creation plc

We end the first day with over £100 of products in the bag to be auctioned off for charity but will any other companies get involved? And can the selfish concept of blagging and “something for nothing” really be applied to help out a good cause? I dunno… join me Monday and maybe I will….

Want to donate a product or learn more? mike@blagman.co.uk.