Tiger Taco (Help I Am Moving.com)

Where can I buy one: Tiger Taco.co.uk (UK) / Tiger Taco.com (US)
Price: £4.99 for 4
It’s a fact of life that the product you really need in a critical moment is going to be something you stumble upon two weeks too late. Take the Tiger Taco for example, a simple tool to help in the packing and unpacking of boxes, and when should one turn up on my desk? Two weeks after I’ve settled down in to my new house. Typical!

But let’s not be worried about my lack of luck and instead focus on whether the product works for those of you who are about to embark on a moving trip of your own. The Tiger Taco gets its name from being shaped like the delicious treat and by having stripes on the side of it. Designed to hold down the edge of any carboard box so you can easily load and unload the contents it’s a novel concept.

As you can see from the photo on the left it works on boxes of all sizes and didn’t show any signs of strain or struggle in holding down our demo box. Because there’s no real grip involved (i.e the device doesn’t pinch, it simply slots over the two pieces of cardboard) the box should come out undamaged and as flexible as it was in the first place.

When you’re done moving there’s not really a lot else you can do with the Tiger Taco, although I suppose small businesses or anyone that moves stuff around their house, will find occasional uses whenever they need to load a box. Marie suggested the Tiger Taco would make an excellent bag holder if placed on a wall, so there’s a possible multipurpose life for them yet.

Although expensive for a moulded piece of plastic, the Tiger Taco is a useful tool to have around the house, and it must be said attaching the taco is a lot less hassle than holding down the edges of a box every time you want to take something out. For those who find that particular scenario a bit of a nightmare then it’s a nice solution to one of life’s little problems.

Extra bit: Help I Am Moving.com may also want to look up my own personal moving tip, Tesco boxes. Every time you get a Tesco delivery online they’ll leave 4-6 giant green boxes which are easy to stack, with loads of space, if a little heavy. These were my own lifesaver on my last moving trip and were pretty much indispensable. Plus they have no sides to pin down either.

Book 1 Out Now! Full Details...

I've spent the last two years convincing companies to give me over 300 products for free. Now for the first time I reveal my secrets.

Available from Amazon.co.uk

With over 200 pages of blagging tips. and lessons on how anyone can get started, this should be the first port of all for anyone looking to get something for nothing.

My technique is based around the "unique offer", something we can all offer a company to convince them to give us a product for free. Whether it be starting a book club, putting a poster in your window, filming a video of a product, emailing your friends about a product or simply word of mouth I will empower you to find your own unique offer.

Rather than a blow by blow breakdown for each scenario (e.g how to get served in a pub, how to get out of a sticky situation etc) that quickly become dated or resort to farce, I offer a consistent method that anyone can use now and forever. Companies want you to have stuff for free, this book will show you why.

Available from Amazon.co.uk

Work for a marketing department? You should read this too:
Want to know the benefits of giving your product away? Want to know how to beat your competition in a original way, improve brand loyalty and word of mouth marketing? This book will show you how.

Curious about what I've blagged?
Alongside this I review many of the odd products to be sent my way, to show what you can achieve, and to show several products you've never heard of. That's not to mention the abusive press interviews, the critics who write false reviews and the villains and sidekicks that rule this world.

So if you've ever wondered how people get something for nothing, or simply fancy reading a tale of my journey in to this strange world then why not pick up a copy?

You can find the book online from England to America, Germany to Japan, and to find the best price for your country please use Book Butler or Book Finder 4 U.

Top Selling UK Retailers:
Amazon.co.uk
Play.com
Lulu.com - Digital Edition only £2.50!

JML StickUp Bulb

Where can I buy one: JML Direct
Contains “Advanced Krypton technology” so claims the box for the JML StickUp Bulb. Someone had better warn Superman (and Superdog for that matter) because it looks like these will be popping up in JML outlets all over the country, and I’d hate for him to stumble in to a dark airing cupboard and turn one on.

Superhero allergies aside the JML StickUp Bulb is quite a handy tool for any dark space, that you need to light without the need for any fancy wiring or connecting. Perfect for the DIY-o-phobe amongst us, and for those of us in rented property. The bulb runs on 4 AA batteries and to connect it you simply peel off an adhesive sticker and push it in to place. The hold of it is fine, and ours has yet to fall from its perch.

JML recommends the tool for closets, cupboards, sheds, basements, attics, caravans and camping but we’ve actually come up with a solution of our own. Having moved from the bright city lights of Birmingham to the peaceful dales of Shifnal our room is no longer filled with the perpetual twilight of streetlamps and M6 foglights. Thus we found ourselves in a much darker room that we were accustomed to.

We had no qualms with sleeping in this of course, or any need for a nightlight, but trips to the toilet in a pitch black hall threatened to become something of a mad fumble, possibly down our nearby stairwell. So we took the JML StickUp Bulb and stuck in to the wall near our bed, knowing we could turn it on in an instance to light the way to our toilet and back.

To make our life even easier, the bulb slots in to a holster so you can actually take it out and carry it around with you whenever you need a bit of light. This makes the toilet run an ideal candidate as you can even light your way in there without having to put the ‘big light’ on and blind your sleep ridden eyes.

And that just about wraps it up really, the title says it all, although the last feature of note is that there’s a pull tag to turn it on so you don’t even have to fumble around for a light switch in the dark. You grab the rope/tag, give it a brief tug and you’re done. How bright is that?

Cheese Roundup – Castello and Apetina

After two years you’d think I’d have a pretty consistent method for writing reviews and testing products and that would be true, if by consistent you mean doing something completely random and stupid in every instance.

Take this latest cheese platter. Methods dictate two methods of eating both cheeses and I managed to somehow stumble upon totally unrelated eating methods purely down to a lack of planning. First with Castello, the traditional method is to peel back the foil wrapper, cut off a satisfying chunk and spread it on to a cracker or piece of bread. In my case this involved scooping out copious amounts and applying them to a spag bol.

Unconventional yes, but in my haste to sample the product (and finding myself with no other cheese for my meal) I tried it anyway and was surprised by the results. The white Castello I had offered a milder taste to Brie despite its similar appearance; giving you less of an aftertaste with a slightly creamier flavour. The cheese melted down rather nicely too it must be said, and within a minute was nowhere to be seen, having absorbed itself fully in to the flavour of the dish, within tainting it in any way.

All in all then it proved to be a rather successful experiment, although the same can’t really be said of my curiosity surrounding Apetina. Despite it being a salad cheese similar to Feta I’m clearly not made for salads (pizza et al all the way) so this called for a bit of a more delicate approach.

Hindsight has taught me now that Apetina does work rather well in pasta dishes and other light bites options but for some bizarre reason I instead decided to try the cubes of cheese in a sandwich. It’s not really something I’d suggest you try at home as slightly wet cubes of cheese make for a soggy sandwich but never the less they did taste rather nice with a bit of ham wrapped around them. The slight saltiness of the liquid they come in did take away from some of the flavour a little, but perhaps it’s made to add in a new flavour to pasta and salad dishes? We may never know.

As much as I berate myself for trying these products in bizarre, often stupid ways, it is nice to shed some new light on methods that may not have been tried before and give others some fresh product ideas. Based on the above experiment I’d chalk that up to one win and one loss, which I guess makes me even.

10 Tips to Blagging Success

The Blagman book 'Blagman: Don't Buy It, Blag It, is now available at Amazon.co.uk here and at Amazon.com here and to give you some idea of what to expect I've compiled ten tips from the book for any prospective blagger in the maker:

1) Remove your preconceptions: There’s no such thing as a free lunch. It’s true, I’ve checked. You may get a free buffet every now and then but not without some sort of annoying person trying to sell you something. Similarly there’s no such thing as a free product, as no company in their right mind would want to give away something without a possible benefit.

2) Create your unique offer (U.O.): What this means for the prospective blagger is you need to find something that you can offer a company in order for them to give you something back free. In my case I offer to review any product that I’m sent for free at http://www.blagman.co.uk, but you don’t need a blog to blag, just an idea. If you, for example, love to eat pizza then why not contact a company that sells pizza? They’d probably love it if you gave them some product feedback. If you have more than 100 friends on Facebook why not offer to email everyone some product info? Or, if you live in a flat, why not offer to put up a product poster in your window? Anything’s possible and the more original your idea the more likely you are to succeed.

3) Do your research: To help you come up with a U.O. research your target company, try to understand what makes them tick and the markets they operate in. Mostly a quick browse of a company’s website and some news articles will be more than enough, but remember the more you understand a company the easier it’ll be to blag.

4) Create your persona: Once you know the company’s target market, then you must embrace it! If you’re trying to get something for free from a well-established, traditional company you’ll need to talk in a concise manner. On the flip side if you’re trying to get a skateboard for free then you’ll need to embrace a more casual persona.

5) Choose your medium: Phone and email make this persona creation even easier as you won’t even need to go to the trouble of dressing up to get free products. However, if phoning you’ll need to cram in a lot of information in order for the person at the other end of the line to understand your U.O. so it’s best to start slowly and to ask questions about the product before you even mention your U.O. Email is far easier as you can lay all of your cards on the table in one go (“I can offer you X, Y, Z if you give me A,B,C") but you’ll need to convince someone you’re not a trouble maker in the first line or that plan is over. The more traditional method of going up to people in shops is all but dead. Unless the managing director, or marketing director, happens to be in that day, and agrees to meet you, you’ve got no chance so that’s not really an option.

6) Initiate Contact: All set? Okay go for it. If you are using the phone jot down on a piece of paper everything you want to get across, and any interesting facts about the company. Brace yourself and dial. If you are emailing – check your spelling and facts.

7) The U.O. is King!: Don’t forget to stress your U.O. or you’ll have the phone slammed down/email binned on you in a second!

8) The “freebie” stigma: Be warned as soon as the word ‘freebie’ is mentioned most companies will shy away so be sure to stress, as part of your U.O., that you can’t fully use the product unless it’s yours to keep. After all you can’t give them any benefits if they wrestle the product away from you!

9) Follow-up: Don’t be surprised if you think you’ve blagged a product, only to find two weeks later that your mailbox is still empty. Second emails / phone calls are often required to remind people you exist and that that you can still offer them some fabulous benefits if you can get your hands on a product sample.

10) Report back: Once you’ve got the product, be sure to act on your promised offer, let the company know your views and tell them about any benefits they have gained by taking you up on your U.O. This opens the door for future collaborations with the company and also ensures you don’t give blaggers like me a bad name!

JML VacPack Review

How Much: £9.99-£14.99
Where can I buy one: JML Direct.com

Doctor Who may be over, but it seems The Doctors’ TARDIS technology may be creeping in to our modern day technology after all. Take the VacPack, which on paper defies logic. You fill it with clothes and by some miracle it is able to reduce the space they take up by anything from 50-75%, saving you space and making moving house easier.

In essence all the VacPack is, is a giant plastic sheet, but it’s the vacuum seal that makes it special. After you’ve popped all your clothes in you pop any vacuum on the end of it (no adaptor required) and it sucks all of the air out of the bag. A strong seal by the entrance ensures no air escapes and during little over a minute you watch in awe as your clothes magically shrink down in to nothingness.

To test this out we put two sleeping bags, five cushions and one throw in to our bag resulting in the below giant bundle:

Everything packed it (and probably room for a few more items) we popped the vaccum on the end and were pleased to see we didn’t even need to close any clasps or fiddle with anything. We had a false start initially where we failed to seal the bag correctly but after that we saw our cushions and co get smaller and smaller.

Everything packed away neatly we could then fold the bag up, or slide in under the bed to save on lots of space. Of course not content with recently breaking my Xbox 360 the first thing my cat Pepper attempted to do was sink his claws in to the VacPack in an effort to break the seal and bring air rushing in. We stopped him after he’d given it a few stabs and are pleased to report it still seemed to work effectively.

Our only other concern was whether the items in the VacPack would have the same effectiveness after being squashed down. So we pulled out the cushions and as the air returned to them they retained all of their springiness they had before we placed them in. Likewise the sleeping bag was equally as soft, if a little creased from the journey it had taken.

As a holiday travel tool, or a storage solution the VacPack definitely does the trick. Just like the TARDIS it looks small on the outside but once you open it up you’ll find it’s definitely bigger on the inside.

DNKY Be Delicious Kisses Review

Apprentice candidate Alex Wotherspoon lost this years competition for one simple reason. His product was fantastic (a two part container where you could clip off a small sample and carry it around with you). It was even labelled by an industry expert as the most innovative product he had seen in his whole career. But the simple fact was he was told it would cost too much to produce and the cheap nasty bottle of his rivals won the day.

Now hang on a second. Isn’t the perfume industry entirely dominated by fantastic designs? Kenzo, Dior, and let’s not forget the great man/woman bottles of Jean Paul Gauttier. All fantastic diffusers, all good sellers, all stand out due to their bottles. This website even shows antiques dating back centuries so this is nothing new.

DKNY know this too, and their ‘Be Delicious’ apple shaped bottle has been doing the rounds now for a couple of years, never really needing changing because of it’s unique shape. This season DKNY have launched a new Kisses version of the iconic design. For those unacquainted with the design it features a silver finish on top and an apple tone colour on the bottom, for this limited edition that’s a gala redish pink. They’ve even gone to the trouble of adding a sticker on top, just to create the air of apple-esque branding.

The downside of new bottles (and don’t worry I’ll get to the smell in a minute) is that they often contain unique firing mechanisms in order to allow you to apply the perfume in their containers. A friend of mine broke an entire bottle of Issey Miyake trying to faff around with the applicator, so these things do matter. I too have been down the curved bottle route once before with Hugo Boss, Boss in Motion and found it to be a confusing fumble on every application.

Boss in Motion’s downfall, was really because they placed the application button on the bottom of the bottle. So whenever you fancied a spray you were in effect pushing the bottle away from you (this was quite a stiff button too) and at the same time holding it down. DKNY have seen sense by placing their button on the top, mere centimetres away from the spray itself. So a quick press (on a light, easy to push button) does make it very easy to apply the perfume.

So they’ve got the design, and the mechanism but it’s not quite perfect. Rather than a nice diffused spray because of the force required inside the bottle you can be left with a single thick spray. The amount that comes out is pretty consistent each time as well, so you can’t freestyle a little bit here, a lot there etc. Not really a deal breaker but something to think of for the next redesign.

It may seem odd that I’ve rambled on about the bottle so long, but the reality of it is, this is a great design and it needs to be fully explored. Often the practical applications of these things are overlooked and for the most part DKNY Be Delicious is right on the money. The smell itself almost seem redundant to these things but it’s no afterthought either. Like the best perfumes it varies from application, to the start of the evening and almost embodies something else by the end.

It starts off as a rich apple, grape and cucumber scent, like a sweet delicious smoothie ready for the drinking. Over time that only develops further and you can pluck smells of flowers out of the air, DKNY tells us these are Rose, Violet and White Muget but you don’t need a press release to tell you this rose would smell just as sweet had you not even known it were there.

All of this combines to bring together a superb scent of summer. You truly can’t appreciate it sniffing at a 8 x 2 card in a perfume shop, so go out, get a good spray and take it for a road test. It’s the perfect perfume to use for a holiday, knowing that every time you smell it again you’ll be taken back to those moments, reminded of summer. Even smelling it now I feel a little care free, almost ready to drift off to sleep in some exotic massage parlour.

I can still smell it now. Making we want to sleep. Making me want to take in all the smells and just re..l….a….x..…….
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Free stuff for July 2008

This months quick and easy round up of ten products you can grab for nothing more than a few clicks of the mouse. Further proof that companies want you to have something for nothing. All offers correct at time of going to press.

Publish a book for free
So you’ve always fancied writing a book but are worried it will take ages to find an agent? Or you simply want to publish something for yourself and a few family members without paying hundreds of pounds for a self publishing option? Lulu strips away these concerns by giving you free self publishing and listing anything you write on their store directly. They take a small cut, you point people to your store and your book is officially out there.

Free alternates to Microsoft Office
Although I had heard of Open Office I have also recently been introduced to Zoho Office and Google Docs thanks to an article at SubHub. Take a look if you feel like saving yourself anywhere from £80 to £200.

Glamour magazine free gifts/ giveaways
Every month Marie gets Glamour magazine through her door is another month when I think her £10 subscription was an absolute bargain. So far she has received £30 of gifts for signing up, free vouchers in every issue, a free £10 lip gloss, and an offer for something free every day at Glamour.com. Oh and she’s only been signed up for 3 months… what else is to come?

Free Cosmetics
Of course if you don’t want to spend £10 in the first place you can always find free cosmetics on the web. This months unlikely due of free products are
L'Oreal Haircare/ styling and a Bodyform Sample Pack.

Free Wildlife fun book
Quick simple one here for kids. The RSPB is offering a free funbook of birds by clicking here

UK Competitions
What better way to embrace freebies than a website designed to keep track of every competition in the UK. UK Competitions.com does exactly that and given that everything these days has an online form you won’t even have to waste a postcard. Good Luck!

40 Free Digital photos
Their free offer seems to change on a monthly basis, but this month Photobox are offering 40 free digital photo prints at Photobox.co.uk. Login, upload your photos, get the freebies and enjoy memories without the excessive overhead.

That’s it for this month. Got anything you want us to feature in August, or simply spotted a good freebie? Email mike@blagman.co.uk.