Whats BSNF power? :-P

Guess I'll have to fix that ... darn!

I'm looking forward to the release of there N Scale Hopper. With the details in there other products can't help but be a winner. 

Thanks for shring the info MRH

Er, sorry to be negative or spoil anyone's fun, but this is 2008. The interviewer acts like it's 1966, when sexism was rampant. I found the whole "cute girls" sequence to be rather disturbing.

......be happy it's 2008, cause if it was still 1966 you wouldn't have seen the interview at all online.....

You're entitled to your opinion, of course ... but we thought we'd poke some fun at today's marketing tactics in general. We all cooked up the close, so if you want to blame anyone, blame all of us - we thought it was a good satire. The hobby can use more ladies whatever their capacity, and that's the real message.

If you watch any TV today, you'll notice all kinds of ads for things from cars to cameras that feature attractive females making goo-goo eyes at the screen. I love what my wife says to our kids when those ads come on - "what are they *really* selling?" I can tell you it isn't cars or cameras. And that's TODAY, 2008.

I dislike our society treating females as mere sex objects as much as anybody - and it's much worse in today's media than it was in 1966. I was looking at a wedding gown book a while back and I was appauled. Very few photos where the man and woman were embracing, looking lovingly into each others eyes. Most photos had the man one place, the woman the other - and the woman was standing in suggestive poses, looking sultry and alluring, while the man was looking off in some contemplative expression - detached, uninvolved. Talk about lack of relationship, lack of being shown as equals, as partners. It was total sexist rubbish.

And just look at the spam on the internet - makes me sick to my stomach ... so don't take a joke and then jump to conclusions, figuring we really believe that junk. Far from it ...

P.S. For an eye-opening example of routine media twisting of perceptions, check out the Dove Evolution video on YouTube ...

Oh, I'm all-too familiar with the rampant sexism in marketing today--I spent 35 years in marketing, so you're preaching to the choir. The problem is, I think your "satire" backfired. I didn't see it that way at all; I saw it as more of precisely the kind of thing to which you object (and I know for a fact that I'm not alone, here). Perhaps discretion may have been the better choice...

Perhaps (FWIW, my wife thought our little "satire" was funny, too) ... but at times I like to take the contrary view in a discussion, for instance, and role-play the postion to the hilt just to draw people out and hear their counter arguments.

My wife sometimes gets upset with me when I do that, since she thought she knew me ... only to later find out I didn't believe a word of it! It's a favorite tactic of mine that helps me strengthen my own position by hearing new counter arguments.

Similarly, I also like to make light of viewpoints, including my own, by mocking or spoofing them ... but then again, that's more of a European mindset - the British are masters at this, for example. I enjoy British humor in this regard, but I guess a lot of Americans don't. I think learning to appreciate other forms of humor helps broaden your viewpoint.

Oh well, back to our regularly scheduled discussion of model railroading ...

Not to belabour a point, but... as an Anglophile I'm quite familiar with British humour, and prefer it to the more slapstick American style. Unfortunately, satire is probably the most difficult form of humour to pull off successfully. When it fails, it can fail quite badly. I'm sorry to say, the BLMA interview had, well, problems. Next time you might want to consult a writer (John Cleese, perhaps?) before venturing into such tricky waters. IMHO, FWIW. Over and out.

Not to cause a disturbance, but he IS a marketing major... A combination of things from his schooling is in play there. I remember something along the lines of "pretty faces sell" (though, as everyone knows that's taken to an extreme now-a-days), and also "do something different".

I think of it this way, if you were at a show, and there were x number of booths, and only one had women there, you'd wonder what was different. It'd be the same if there were x number of booths with women, and one booth with no women. Its human nature to notice the difference, and your inquisitive nature to find out why.

Hence, you show up at BLMA's booth, and his marketing major has done its job in marketing his items.

Oh well, guess we should all be glad he's not selling nudist figures, he might have offended more people.

As for Jeff, we all can tell he's no pro at this! :P (or is he?) Maybe I should check first.