Welcome to the first of a new weekly podcast series we're going to be doing – a round table news discussion. Every week, we'll be discussing and debating a few different topics that catch our eye each week, navigating and discovering cool, exciting or interesting stories and different perspectives. In this episode, Platforms Editor J.D. DiGiovanni and Deputy Photography Editor Henry Phillips join Nick Caruso and talk about: an exposé that reveals Amazon UK has been destroying millions of goods to meet their bottom line; Ochs & Junior introducing a gorgeous and novel perpetual calendar watch; and Ford trademarking the name "Rattler".
An exposé reveals Amazon UK destroys millions of goods to meet their bottom line; Ochs & Junior's new perpetual calendar; Ford trademarks "Rattler."
Episode Navigation:
Featured:
From Fast Company: Amazon is destroying millions of unsold goods, from smart TVs to laptops
From ITV: Amazon Destroying Millions of Items of Unsold Stock in One of Its Uk Warehouses Every Year, Itv News Investigation Finds
"Innovative Sustainability" – You Might Already Own the Most Disruptive Piece of Outdoor Gear
This Might Be the Weirdest Perpetual Calendar Watch You've Ever Seen
This Is How Calendar Watches Work
These Perpetual Calendars Are Some of the Best Watches from Patek Philippe
Ford's 'Rattler' Trademark Suggests Another Off-Roader Is Coming
The Ford Maverick Is a Whole New Kind of Pickup Truck
Is Ford Already Testing the New, Super-Powerful Bronco?
The Ram 1500 TRX, Driven: King of the Tyrant Pickups
12 New Gadgets to Have on Your Radar (inc. Canon EOS R3)
From PetaPixel: Canon EOS R3 Expected in September, Nikon Z9 in November
The Ordinary Skin Care Regimen
Brickit: LEGO Building AR App
Nick Caruso:
This is the Gear Patrol podcast.
Nick Caruso:
In this episode, Platforms editor, JD DiGiovanni, and deputy photography editor Henry Phillips, join me to talk about the news. Including an expose that reveals Amazon UK has been destroying millions of goods to meet their bottom line, and what that means for the environment and economics at large. Then we more or less marvel at the new and very novel perpetual calendar watch by Ochs and Junior, it's called the Calendario Cent'Anni. And then we speculate on why Ford recently trademarked the name Rattler. We end with a lightning round of other stories and products, including an app for Lego lovers that we're currently obsessing over, and or fascinated by. If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe to the GP podcast on your platform of choice and leave us a five star review. I'm Nick Caruso, and I'm glad you're here. Let's get started.
Nick Caruso:
All right. Welcome listeners to a first of a new weekly podcast series we're going to be doing, it's a round table news discussion, and my colleagues and I are going to be discussing and maybe debating, or cussing and discussing as my mother would say, a few different topics that catch our eye each week. And in the name of navigating and discovering cool, exciting, interesting stories and different perspectives on them. So, we've got JD and Henry. You guys ready to get started?
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, absolutely.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
You betcha.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, feeling good? Fair warning to everybody that we may all be dealing with a bit of thunder in the background, but that just adds to the excitement.
Nick Caruso:
All right, the first story we want to cover is courtesy of a Fast Company article about an investigation into Amazon, the company. Specifically in Scotland, where the company is allegedly destroying massive amounts of unused products to the tune of like 130,000 in one week, is referenced in this article. This happens essentially because the company is determining products' retail values become higher than the cost to store those goods, and there just isn't a system in place to do away with them, so they just dump them out. There's a video that an employee took of all of this stuff happening. And calls into question not just business and economics issues, but also environmental concerns and more. So JD, you surfaced the story, it's a big one. Is that a fair summary I just gave, and what's your takeaway on the whole thing?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. No, it's a good summary. It was essentially an Amazon worker in Dunfermline, Scotland was taking video under the radar, of the company destroying around 130,000 unused or returned, and lightly used products, on a weekly basis. So, really what it amounted to is millions of products being destroyed a year, laptops, jewelry, books. And yeah, Amazon didn't deny the allegations, and instead said, "Look, we're working towards a goal of zero disposable of all of our products." And both Amazon and Scotland have circular economy policies, and we can get to what that means in just a second. But if you visit Amazon's page, they have a kind of corporate-ese, that speaks about reducing waste and packaging, recyclable materials, and saying they give up to 25 million products a year.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
So, what the video seems to indicate, and I like the reporting from this, I think ITV is the name of the news outlet in Scotland that broke this story. This seems to indicate that the policy isn't going far enough, whatever policy they do have, that it's still enough a part of their daily business operation, at least at this one facility, that it's a pretty big problem. Yeah, the piece in Fast Company by Lucy [Wishart 00:04:35] did a really good job of outlining some of the problems, or some of the underlying problems that are causing this issue in the first place. I think the most important or interesting that she made, was that trash is made trash by classification, that something is trash to one company or one person, is to someone else not really trash at all. And the problem with this stuff going on with Amazon, is that essentially they classify products as trash after they've depreciated in value enough that the cost of actually storing them is higher than their stated value on the books. And so at that point, it becomes totally easy to just get rid of it.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
But that's the broad strokes of the story. And I think there's some interesting implications that I'd love to talk more about you guys. But first of all, just kind of step back, I guess.
Nick Caruso:
I don't know. Well, you've mentioned circular economics, and this is largely an economics issue. And if only we had an economics major to participate in this discussion.
Henry Phillips:
Oh God, that was a decade ago, man.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, well this is happening now.
Henry Phillips:
Amazon was a bookseller. They weren't, this was like 2010. No, this is so intriguing to me, it feels like it's popped up anecdotally in all sorts of things that I've run across, I don't know, just as a consumer of gear. Have you guys ever ordered something from a direct to consumer company, and something's broken or something's wrong, and they say, "Keep it," they say, "Toss it"? I swear, I got a couch from a heretofore unnamed brand. There was a bolt that was stripped on one of the 10 pieces of the couch, but a hundred pound couch, more. The return process was initiated, and the people who came by to pick it up was 1-800-GOT-JUNK.
Nick Caruso:
You're kidding me. I didn't know that.
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, it went straight into the trash. Which is probably a more extreme example than this, where it's just like that thing takes a lot to ship. It's not worth it. But the idea that there is... You kind of have to, no, you don't have to hand it to them, but there's an amazing bit of accounting that it's like, this works. And someone was like, "Yeah, it makes sense to just throw it away." And everybody else in the room was kind of like, "All right. Yeah."
Nick Caruso:
That was my takeaway from this, is that it's depressing for a lot of reasons. It's a carbon impact, it's essentially kind of lying in a way, there are environmental effects. But it's just kind of wild that it comes down to just a heartless act of numbers, and that there's not a system to just use that stuff. It calls to mind bakeries throwing away bagels at the end of the day, instead of giving them to people who could use them because they need to eat. What are the other implications you were alluding to, JD? What were some of the things that jump out to you?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah, well I think first I would just probably respond to the idea of like, I think this is distinct from a couch being tossed away. And not only just because that's a one-off thing, and that this is more of a system. But it's also, it implicates a system of accounting as we're talking about, that the idea is that it's a loss to the company to keep a product that on paper is lost value. But essentially what happens is you're making public the cost, instead of keeping it within the own company. Because there is, even though we can't see it all that well, when get rid of something, when you toss it out, there is a kind of overall cost, because we have a finite number of resources and materials. And to waste that, as well as wasting labor and carbon emissions. I don't know, it's one of those things that doesn't sit right on first glance, and the more you look into it actually confirms that.
Nick Caruso:
It's worse.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. Because there are a lot of things that on first glance, this is kind of ridiculous, and then you look more into it and it's like, oh, I can actually see the logic. And there is a kind of cold logic here. But I think that one of the things that really struck me looking more into this story and doing some more reading, specifically about the idea of the circular economy, is that I think that companies Amazon are missing out on an opportunity to do something with that stuff that they're throwing away. So, people talk about the circle of life, right? In the natural world, you have this loop, where the sun grows a seed, the plant is eaten by an animal, the animal dies, the animal goes back to the soil, it all goes around. But we have a super linear approach, where we just take stuff, we make it and then we dispose of it.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
But our own writer, Tanner [Boden 00:10:20] has written about the rise of reuse, and rise of companies that have found ways to resell and refurbish stuff back to other folks. And I think that it's kind of exciting to think about all the opportunities we all have, or that there are out there, to resell and reintroduce stuff that folks would maybe otherwise consider trash, into the market for folks who want to buy it. And I think there's a lot of money there too. I guess the secondhand market hit like $24 billion in value in 2018, and it's projected to be up to like 51. And so, when you're looking at this stuff that Amazon is doing, it's disappointing, but there is, I think, a certain kind of hopefulness. In that provided the right kind of incentives, that a company like that could actually find ways to make use of the stuff they're dumping out, instead of just doing away with it and then covering their eyes and ears.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. It seems like Amazon is so big, and so for lack of a better word, necessary, that it's tough to step away from it. And an individual consumer, if I quit using Amazon, it's not going to teach them a lesson. This is sort of a systemic thing that needs to be addressed in a different, or legal, bigger, higher way. The circle you were talking about, that relates to a circular economy?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. There's some crazy ideas out there about how to make a circular economy work.
Nick Caruso:
Because they want the circular, that's the goal, right? A circular economy is desirable in this situation?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. And from what I've seen, the folks who propose it and talk about it, talk about a percentage of their business or percentage of waste produced being circular, instead of being total. But some of the ideas out there are like, no ownership, that everything is leased and everything is then returned to a company to be refurbished and built back up. That would never work in a country like the United States. But there are also implications too, about stuff as broad as housing stock, that instead of building a new building, can you reuse and refurbish a home or a building, in a way that can be more flexible to different types of uses.
Nick Caruso:
Henry, does that track with your education?
Henry Phillips:
Oh, God. Academic economics is not fun, man, especially 10 years ago. That being said, the idea of a circular economy is amazing in a lot of ways. And also, yeah JD, the idea that given even a slight change in incentives, there's no real reason that Amazon or some other large company wouldn't change tack and move into a direction that would be vastly more beneficial for millions of people. And it's hard to tell what that would be. Would a change in tax law make it expensive enough that they figure out another way to offload their products? Totally, right? But that's the exciting bit, is this rise of resale like you were talking about. Where does that go, and then how do you start to create enough incentives that large companies funnel products into that ecosystem? And I'm curious if there are any modern examples of that.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah, or even just changing accounting practices, which is some of what a lot of the folks who have been writing about this story seem to talk about. Is that there's such a thing as environmental accounting, where you're not just writing something off as being tossed off and therefore not on the books and not your problem anymore. But yeah, it seems to be some combination of changing the incentives, and then just changing common practice.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. That's what really strikes me overall, is that this just seems so avoidable, but like you've both alluded, it's sort of like a big shift that has to happen. But it does seem to be possible that there is one shift that could happen that would make that go away.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I will add in as one last thing about this kind of accounting and getting rid of stuff. What Amazon is doing is distinct from what luxury watch makers or luxury goods makers in general do when it comes to destroying bags, or watches or jewelry. They're artificially, not necessarily artificially, but whenever they have a problem when they've created too much supply and the demand is waning, instead of having something slip onto the gray market, it's within their brand interest to just destroy it instead. Because it bolsters the value of the stuff they've already produced and sold, and keeps the value of the brand high. I'm not sure what the solve is for that in particular, because that actually seems hard to incentivize your way out of.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. Well, that's the other striking thing, is that this is the second layer, Amazon's the second layer here. They don't make these things necessarily, they purchase them from a company and then resell them, or some iteration of that. So the original company, they may need to produce less stuff. There's a miscalculation of demand or something here, that also factors in, from my POV. Henry, any last words? I assume that you just have a bookshelf full of economics books. Is that true?
Henry Phillips:
The worst part is that I do. It's literally above me. And I wish I could be a wealth of information here about behavioral economics, and tax law and the push towards a circular economy. But as it turns out, I've spent the last eight years looking at photos of gear, and writing about the best stick vacuum. So, here we are.
Nick Caruso:
Well, we'll get to that. Maybe that'll be the next, next pod. You can give us a stick vacuum rec. But since you alluded to gear, why don't we move to a story you brought up? This is the company Ochs Und Junior, it's a Swiss company, watch company. And they've released a new watch with a very novel calendar function. There are no numbers, it's simply a system of dots and dials, and it promises to remain accurate for a hundred years. So Henry, what's your initial reaction to this guy? And what other specifics do we need to know?
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, so this feels hilariously ephemeral compared to the state of world economics, but no, this company is really interesting. And I hope to, anyone listening, immediately Google them, they've got such a distinct look. And that's what sets them apart, and once you dive into why these watches look the way they do, you realize why they're so interesting. And then you immediately start trying to justify a really, really expensive esoteric wristwatch. But yeah, so the company is called Ochs Und Junior, or if you're being proper about it, it's Ochs Und Junior.
Nick Caruso:
Let's be proper.
Henry Phillips:
Let's never be proper again. But it was founded by this guy named Ludwig Oechslin, I'm fairly positive I got that right. But he was around in the watch industry forever, and ever, and ever. Deeply influential guy, creating important watches. Most notably, probably for this... God, I get stuck with all the Swiss words, famously for this company called Ulysse Nardin. And then he founded this company called Ochs Und Junior. And I think they started showing up like 2010, 2011, and they were an instant hit among these nerdy watch circles. Guys who have somewhat transcended the idea of Rolex and Omega, and have gone on to search for something new, and novel and different.
Henry Phillips:
And what he was doing, was he was creating these really elegant but kind of chunky, they're not dissimilar in than a hockey puck. They're not elegant tuxedo dress watches, but they're really beautiful. And this guy was determined to make these very complicated watches, complicated in the sense that they can tell you the phase of the moon, or multiple time zones, or they can keep track of an accurate calendar for a hundred years, or they can tell you literally anything you want to know about the world.
Nick Caruso:
Like circular economy stuff?
Henry Phillips:
Exactly, yeah. It all comes in together, this is why we formatted the whole thing this way. But his whole thing is using the bare minimum of parts, and he does that with using gears. So his big thing is gears, and you think oh, it's a watch, of course they use gears. But there are, a complicated watch, a perpetual calendar which is effectively what this is, a good one, a big one, one by Patek Philippe, like the hundred thousand dollar things. They're using levers, and gates and things, and it's 147 pieces just to make the perpetual calendar bit run.
Henry Phillips:
And a quick backstory, perpetual calendar, it's a calendar. Every watch has a date, but imagine if you never had to set the date when there's a month with 30 or 31, or when there's a leap year. It adjusts for all that, it compensates for all these things, it's accurate for a hundred plus years. Some will track the phase of the moon, but all of them will stay accurate even through leap years, and February and things like that. So these big, complicated, famous watchmakers would be using 147 pieces, and Ochs Und Junior oxen famously uses nine pieces for their perpetual calendar. And it's this series of disks, and you look at it, you look at these explainer videos and you think there is no way that this does what they say it does, but it does. And it's beautiful, and it's intuitive.
Henry Phillips:
And it's kind of the reason why it looks the way it looks, which is a bunch of disks, a bunch of really... It's a really novel way of telling time in a lot of ways, very few words or numerals even. And the kicker about all this stuff is they're simple, but they're also, I want to say cheap, but they're not. They're relatively incredibly affordable for what you're getting. Which is you're getting this one tiny, tiny company who will customize a watch however you'd like, and that does all this amazing stuff. And it costs instead of the $80,000 Patek, you're paying $10,000. Or you're paying in this case, for the Calendario Cent'Anni, you're paying $15,000. Which to any consumer of non-hyper luxury watches is quite a bit of money. But [crosstalk 00:23:19].
Nick Caruso:
Well, it's still a lot, if you consider the ratio of 147 to nine, and then apply it to the price, you're paying a lot.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah, you're getting fewer pieces, what the heck?
Nick Caruso:
Fewer pieces, dollar per piece, not accurate. JD, what do you think? Is this a $15,000 watch?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I think this watch is so cool. Whenever anyone, this watch eschews the common design of these complications, it's doing its own thing. And usually whenever that's the case, I get the vibe that if someone's trying to redesign or rethink something that's been developed over hundreds of years, or over a long period of time by a lot of different makers, it's often just not as good, or it's circuitous and weirdly self-serving, like, "Look at me, look at the design I've done." And it's like, well, okay. It's almost like the scene in Indiana Jones where the guy's swinging a sword around and then he pulls out the gun and shoots him. It's like, there's a simpler way to do this. You're just doing a lot of stuff for no reason.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
But this watch seems to avoid that self-serving pat on the back kind of stuff, and I think it's because it's so clean. The lines are clean, it all looks very well put together. It almost has like a Bauhaus look, and I love that.
Nick Caruso:
Very much.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. I don't know, I guess the other element of it too is the more I was looking at it, the more... It seems like you could probably build more of a special and satisfying relationship with this watch, because it is its own thing, it has its own design language. And so, as you're learning how to read it, because you would have to, it seems like there's a bit of a learning curve. So, you're paying $15,000 for a watch and you have to work at it to read it. But once you get there, it's like damn, that's your relationship with that watch. You get it, and other people will have to figure it out, and that's actually kind of cool.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, for sure. First of all, I should have remarked immediately, Henry, you say you stumble with the Swiss stuff, but you've said the name of this watch perfectly, with this wonderful Italian lilt. But that's a good point, JD. It's not a pretentious watch somehow, even though it's remarkably advanced and super different.
Henry Phillips:
There's no branding on it, it's brandless.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. I almost go the other way, my gut almost goes the other way. I was like, is this a cheap watch? There's almost so little in terms of defining characteristics, that it defies that design element too much, it almost over-corrects for it.
Nick Caruso:
I want to try to, this is maybe not the smartest thing for me to do, but trying to describe how this works. There are a system of dials, on the face, the face is perforated with a little dial and you can, each day is a new dot, this dial rotates and a colored dot moves around, that's how you track days. And then within that in the center, underneath the hands where they pivot, are other dials that spin in relation to each other. And by reading those, you can tell what year it is, and if it's a leap year. It is an entirely new calculus, and it sort of defies, it boggles the mind. I don't know, it's wild to think that that's happening with just a small system of gears.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Back to the point about the look of it having be brandless, and you almost wondering to yourself, is this actually a $15,000 watch? I found myself wondering, someone gave me a stack of $15,000 and said, all in ones, by the way. And said, "You can buy whatever watch you want."
Henry Phillips:
Big stack.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I know, it's a huge stack. But would I buy this watch? I don't know. It's really cool, I'm really into it. But like if I have 15 grand to spend on a watch, I kind of want people to know if I'm going to spend 15 grand on a watch. Or at least have it have some kind of similar things. So, I don't know, I'd be curious to hear what you think, Henry.
Henry Phillips:
I wish, I wish I had the guts to do that. That being said, as I was researching this, I immediately went to their site, which is delightful. And they make a date-only version. They make one that is just the date, it doesn't adjust or compensate for any sort of astrological events.
Nick Caruso:
You mean as opposed to a perpetual calendar?
Henry Phillips:
Yeah. No, just one through 31, it'll get a date wrong every couple of months. And those, I believe they're about $8,000, which is still an enormous sum of money to spend on a watch. But I found myself... So, correction there, it's about 5,500. And began to think after reading all the lore about this watch, and the guy, and the simplicity and everything, I couldn't help but think, man, this would be kind of cool. But would I ever pull the trigger? Would I ever hit the buy button, and get it from the one place that they sell it in the world? I don't know, man. Well, I do know. I wouldn't. I love it, I deeply adore it. And if I had a nice collection of watches and six grand to get another one... And again, this is a watch guy's watch.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, that's the point. So that's what I was going to say, is that if you do wear this, if you buy this and you want people to know, you almost have to actively tell people, proactively. Go up to them and be like, "Hey, do you want to know how to read time on my watch? Or dates?" But with everyone.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
It almost seems like a if you know, you know kind of watch. If I saw someone wearing that on the subway, I'm not thinking this guy is just a very well-off finance guy. It's just like, oh no, this is a step above. And I do, so whenever I'm on a subway I'm always looking at people's wrists, dude. It's nice to see fancy Rolex's, but if you see something that's a little more deep-cut watch guy, the amount of respect I have for that is actually pretty high. So, I don't know.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. And also, I think it's worth saying after you found out the price of the regular date version, Henry, that each one of those gears in that perpetual calendar is a thousand dollars.
Henry Phillips:
A thousand dollar a gear. This is really, this is a... I think we're about to make the same joke.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. How's that for patrolling, huh?
Henry Phillips:
This is the kind of original, deeply humorous comedy that you all come here for.
Nick Caruso:
That's right. We've worked together for years and years, Henry. We've probably made that joke separately so many times, that it was just inevitable that it would happen simultaneously at some point. Okay, so it sounds like you both may actually want to purchase this watch. JD, you said you don't, but I don't believe you after saying how much you respect the guy who does.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah, if I can't do it, I want someone else to.
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, I want someone who has disposable income that I like hanging out with, to buy this watch. And I can think I helped inform that decision, and it's an awesome watch, and I so appreciate you. And then I'll go buy a Rolex Explorer or something.
Nick Caruso:
There you go. That actually inspires a perfect segue. Because I used to cover automotive stuff, and there's a trope, inside joke in the automotive journalism community, which is a really nerdy thing to say, that people always ask you for advice about what car to buy. And then when you give it to them, they never take it, ever. It's just this weird irony. But a friend of mine did, he bought an Audi Q5, I thought it was the perfect car for him. And I get to enjoy it, even though he bought it, which is great. And it's validating, very validating emotionally.
Nick Caruso:
But that leads me to our third topic, which is automotive related. And the theme of this one is speculation. So, this story is from Ford, who has of course been making a lot of news lately vis-a-vis off-road vehicles and SUV's. They've recently filed a trademark for the name Rattler R-A-T-T-L-E-R. I'm very tempted to just pronounce it Rattler, but I won't yet. This alludes to a rattlesnake, of course. And the trademark is for, and I quote, "Motor vehicles, namely automobiles, pickup trucks, electric vehicles, sport utility vehicles, off-road vehicles and their structural parts." So, essentially anything having to do with a car could be what this name is for, and we don't know for sure.
Nick Caruso:
And that's why it's interesting. It's interesting because of all the implications and possibilities it inspires. It could mean an entirely new model, or perhaps just an aggressive trim level for existing models, just parts packages, a la carte parts. And I have a lot of thoughts, but my guess is that the Rattler will be a limited edition trim, aesthetics package for the new mini pickup truck they're coming out with, the Maverick, and similar vehicles in their lineup like the Escape. That's my monologue. I know you guys read up on this, do you have opinions on the matter, or speculation?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Anything special for a new, and Nick we've we've talked about this in the past, anything extra bad-ass for a smaller sized pickup truck is exciting to me. Even though I kind of live through people who own cars, and don't necessarily have a plan to buy one anytime soon, living in the city.
Nick Caruso:
You should see my friend, he's got an Audi Q5.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah, there you go. But I was thinking more about the rumor mill in general, around Ford and any new vehicle at the moment. It feels like there's so much excitement and potential with what a new car may be. For a long time, it just felt like a new car is just going to be maybe a new suspension, a new engine, some kind of new setup and combination of looks, in a petrol engine. But the automotive industry as a whole is just going through this really big change, of going from petrol powered vehicles to moving towards electric. And the excitement and the interest that I feel myself having, looking at news about this stuff and seeing our own coverage of it, is born out of what the hell is car making going to look like in the next few years? And it's remarkable that we're in this moment where it feels like we just don't know. It may very well just be a trim line or a parts package for a pickup. But the world of possibilities has been vastly expanded.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. We are truly in a Renaissance again, of the car, whatever, 30 years later, 40 years later. That's a great point about the hype. It's this huge hype train constantly. Yeah, it's wild. Henry, do you have Rattler thoughts?
Henry Phillips:
Yeah. Totally to JD's point, what a fun time to be into cars in any sort of way.
Nick Caruso:
For sure.
Henry Phillips:
Whether it's EVs, or this seemingly never ending war between the big three to make an incredibly powerful, incredibly impractical car. I do wonder, the Rattler is just such a bizarre name to me. There's one part of me that thinks if you buy the Ford, whatever, Ranger Rattler, it's going to be the best made car you'll ever buy. Because the last thing Ford would want something to happen in 15 years, is some GM guy with the sticker of the guy pissing on the Ford logo on the back of his truck, it's a layup joke, man. I'm not going to do any sort of regional accent, because that would alienate all sorts of Southern pickup truck owners.
Nick Caruso:
You did Italian.
Henry Phillips:
That's a Rattler. Yeah, [crosstalk 00:37:36] pickup trucks.
Nick Caruso:
I agree, the name is something that got me too. Because obviously, a rattlesnake is very vicious and terrifying and aggressive, but also, I know this from owning an old four by four, is that things start to fall apart, and they start to rattle. And I just think this is going to become a meme very quickly if it's something along those lines, "Oh yeah, I got my rattler," it's literally a can of bolts that's just shaking around. So, that's a cynical way to look at it, but I also think that combining all of those thoughts, we've seen regularly that used, let's say a Toyota Tacoma pickup truck, a couple of years old, will sell for more than a new one. And that's why this segment is so wild to me. And I think Ford is going to capitalize on that motion and that passion, and they're probably just trying to squeeze every last bit out of it with this kind of move.
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, why not? And I'm all for fun names. If we can have more... I didn't realize it was called the Ram T-Rex until, we've been working remotely, so I don't get to hear people talk about cars. I just get to read about cars. But the more you can have ridiculous names that feel like they're plucked out of Madison Avenue in the 60s, the better for me. Give me the Bronco, the Eagle, the whatever.
Nick Caruso:
Well, the Bronco, along these lines, Ford has also re-upped their old Excursion and Splash trademarks for the names, but they also have Warthog. Which I think is probably going to be applied to the Bronco or something like that, and is obviously an allusion to Halo.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I was going to say, as a kid who played video games in the early 2000s, the first thing that comes to my mind is that video game.
Nick Caruso:
A hundred percent. I just want to go around and just run into some ugly aliens with your Bronco.
Henry Phillips:
If I can get a Bronco Warthog with the Rattler package, the deposit is in tomorrow. That's incredible.
Nick Caruso:
A hundred percent.
Henry Phillips:
You can take the whatever, E-450 BlueTech, and shove it.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Nick, I don't know as much about the production, how long it takes to get a car out as maybe you do. So, this has been trademarked by Ford. When will we know? When will we know if it's just a Ziploc bag full of bolts that you put in your glove compartment, or if it's actually-
Nick Caruso:
A baby toy?
Henry Phillips:
That would be incredible.
Nick Caruso:
I hesitate to even hazard a guess right now, but that's what I was alluding to with Excursion and Splash. Excursion was Ford's just gargantuan SUV 20 years ago, and Splash was a trim level on the Ranger in the late 90s, maybe going into the 2000s, I'm not totally sure. Mid-90s, I don't know, so long ago. But they're probably not going to use those again, so they're just re-upping those trademarks to have them, to own them. This very well may be something like that, almost like vaporware in a way. But I don't know, if it's a parts package, you could slap this on immediately, if you've literally have the parts. So I don't know, I don't know what to expect. That's kind of the point here, is speculation through and through. But what I do know, is that off-road packages on cars we're already familiar with are popular like gangbusters. And I don't know, we could be setting foot in a Rattler sometime soon. Okay, cool-
Henry Phillips:
It's become more and more slurred as we've gone on too. It started off as the Rattler, and now it's just the Rattler.
Nick Caruso:
That's my rat. That would be a lot better than 'Ler, that's my 'Ler. I don't know, that's a terrible way to end that segment. But we do need to-
Henry Phillips:
You don't want to go down that road.
Nick Caruso:
Syllable jokes? So, let's wrap stuff up with a lightning style round. We've been fully discussing these other stories, but this is more of a light show and tell kind of thing. So, we all knew what the three stories we were just going to discuss are, we don't know what these are. So, we're just going to lob them up and tell each other what we are fascinated by right now, what's grabbing our attention and what we're obsessed with. And everybody get ready for our little surprise and delight. JD, we started with you for the story. So Henry, can we start with you this time?
Henry Phillips:
Sure.
Nick Caruso:
What you got?
Henry Phillips:
As kind of the guy for Gear Patrol's photo department, I'm constantly looking at cameras that we or I likely won't buy. But we're in kind of, in the same way that there's this fun resurgence in cars, to a much smaller scale there's a fun paradigm shift in cameras. These cameras that are normally produced for the cycles of the Olympics, Canon and Nikon will debut their flagship cameras oftentimes right before the Olympics, because that's like the Olympics of photography. And of course, they completely misfired last year and released these two excellent new cameras that nobody talked about or cared about, or some people may have bought them to shoot, I don't know, sports with no fans in the stands.
Nick Caruso:
Just empty stadiums.
Henry Phillips:
Yeah. The emotion of the cardboard cutout. But they're both now releasing, if not flagships, then big, expensive, professional cameras. You're talking in the $6,000 range. And they're mirror-less, so they're different technology that's been everywhere, it's in your phone, it's wherever, but it hasn't been in pro cameras. So, Canon is just about to announce their EOS R3, and Nikon is just about to announce their Z9, and for all intents and purposes they're very similar cameras, and they just look so cool. They're heinously expensive, and they're overkill for just about anybody and everything. But they're like the most covetable thing on earth, and I've spent the last two weeks looking at rumor posts of the R3 specifically, the Canon, and I want one so badly for no reason.
Nick Caruso:
There's a reason, Henry.
Henry Phillips:
Well, sure. But I am sitting in front of-
Nick Caruso:
Economics books?
Henry Phillips:
Four cameras, and a shelf full of economics books, and they all work perfectly. The books, not so much, but the cameras, excellent cameras. But there's something about photography, where it's just like, it's a great gearhead hobby or profession, because there's just endless stuff. It's all on an endless upgrade cycle, and you can absolutely bankrupt yourself doing it.
Nick Caruso:
And by God, you will. Very good. JD, what are you surprising and delighting with today?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I have for a while been interested in developing a skincare routine, but it's a really complicated space. There's a lot of stuff out there, and there are different skin types. And honestly, it's all been very intimidating. And maybe even more so as a guy, because I feel like so much of the focus around this stuff tends to be more towards women. And that's probably my own hangup, but I did finally come across something that seemed to make it all really simple, and I'm just starting to use it, but it got me past that stage of being interested, but not quite pulling the trigger. It is The Ordinary. I don't know if you all have heard about them. Yeah, but super simple. You answer a handful of questions on their website, and then they just recommend the stuff that you should use.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
It's all stuff that has actually been tested, so there's no snake oil here. It's stuff that has gone through studies, and there's some kind of reasoning and thinking behind why this would work, and why this would work for your type of skin. And it's not that expensive, so all in, you don't have to spend that much money just to get started. And they ship it to your door, or if you're in one of the cities where they have their own store and are feeling antsy to get out at any chance, you can just go and drop by and pick it up. So, definitely recommend anyone who is interested in that kind of stuff and has maybe similarly felt hesitant, to just check that out and drop it in. Because it's nice not to have zits on your face when you're entering your thirties.
Nick Caruso:
That's right, especially now that you have to show people your face again, it's really-
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I know.
Nick Caruso:
Okay. Well, it looks like it's working well. You look nice and clear. All right, so those are both like mature things to be interested in. So by way of contrast, I am fascinated by, but also I have not done this yet, I have not used this yet, but I'm fascinated by it. And I no doubt will at some point, use a new app called Brickit, which is an app for Lego brick builders that uses your AR camera, your augmented reality camera on your phone, to scan a literal pile of bricks and tell you what you can build with it. There are simple little builds... But it apparently works. You scan it, it gives you like, "You can build a duck," or, "You can build a tree," or whatever the hell. And it'll show you the photo where the brick is in the pile, and give you all the instructions.
Nick Caruso:
People have been saying that it works exceedingly well, the app has I think a four star rating, yeah, on the App Store, for something that just came out, it's pretty wild. And the couple drawbacks are, it suggests which bricks are missing, sometimes if it's not the right color it'll say it's missing, whatever. But this just blows my mind. This seems like something Tony Stark would literally have. And I can't wait to go to my parents' crawlspace and find my Legos and take a picture of them.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Does this, do you risk undermining the essential nature of playing with Lego bricks by having a roadmap as to what you can build, with the help of a phone? Or am I being way too much of a luddite here?
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, yes and no. I feel like I'm a total idiot. I can't look at bricks anymore and be like, what can I build? I just sort of start putting them together, and then I want to do a crossword or something. So I don't know, I need the boost. It could be fun for children of all ages.
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, I love the idea that you're just creating new Lego sets. You've got this pile, or bucket, I think I had a little plastic suitcase of Legos. And I like the idea of just kind of making a duck. I wonder how complicated they get.
Nick Caruso:
Not very.
Henry Phillips:
Like, how many pieces could you have before it recommends you build the Statue of Liberty?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I'm just glad that someone has come up with a use for the AR camera outside of the Apple demonstrations, that people actually use.
Nick Caruso:
That's a great point. It was like, it can unlock your phone better, and you can build Legos. So anyway, that's what I'll be doing next time I'm in Michigan at my parents'. And now everybody knows my secret, though I will name check Jack [Siemer 00:51:48], our colleague Jack Siemer, because I sent this to him because he's a Lego guy. And he was like, "I wish you were the first, or even the third person to have sent me this today." He's worse than I am.
Nick Caruso:
Cool, that's a good little show and tell. Guys, we need to end it there because we've been going a long time. But thank you for your time, and everybody tuning in, thanks for listening. If you want any more information about anything we were talking about, a lot of stories here, a lot of information, a lot of products, check out the show notes in the post on the website, if that's where you're listening. And if you want to weigh in with a comment or a question, or even submit a news item, whatever you want to do, hit us up. You can comment on articles, you can hit us up on social media. Our handle is @gearpatrol everywhere, it's one word. Or you can email us at podcast@gearpatrol.com, and let us know what you think. And also subscribe, and rate the pod if you have a spare moment, kind of like you're rating the new Lego App, five stars for both, please. That'll help us get into more ears. So JD, Henry, thank you again for your time and your brains.
Henry Phillips:
Thanks, Nick.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Thanks, Nick.
Nick Caruso:
I'm Nick Caruso. And until next time, take care.