My Urban Legend

[qos]

This is for toesontheground, who asked for this story after I mentioned (at least a month ago) that one of the things I was proud of was creating an urban legend. Ok, so it's a small-community urban legend, but it *stuck*.

In one of my previous lives, I was Director of Marketing for a model rocket company. Our flagship product was 13" long, would break the sound barrier on a G motor (in case any of you are rocket savvy), and cost $19.95. It was fully re-launchable if -- and this was a big damn "if" -- you could find it again. 13" disappears very quickly when traveling that fast, that high. Especially if there are any clouds, or there is even a light breeze to waft the parachute far, far away.

People loved those rockets -- but they were infamous for being "one launch" models. If you launched it on a G and recovered it, you earned serious bragging rights.

One of my favorite parts of my job was to monitor the rocketry newsgroup and chat with members about our products, answer questions, and generally promote our company as being friendly, accessible, and genuinely involved in the community. One day, someone posted yet another "lost my Mach-Buster" launch report. Someone else posted a reply in which he described launching his on a much smaller motor and recovering it.

>> I launched one on a single use E30 - Great flight - recovered a couple of
>> hundred feet from the pad. It was a totally still and clear day though.

I was in a whimsical mood that day, and posted this in response:

> Hmmm. . . . Obviously a malfunctioning model.
>
> All Mach-Busters are equipped with a teleportation device and a homing
> tracker. They are designed to rush to apogee, then teleport back to our
> facility here in Everett, WA, where they are carefully disassembled,
> stripped of their paint, and re-sold to launch and return again and
> again. . . .
>
> There are actually less than one hundred Mach-Busters in existence, and
> each has been sold dozens of times. Except for the few - like the one
> mentioned above - that are actually recovered by their owners. ;)

Folks jumped all over this, and continued to make reference to the teleportation devices for months after.

Unfortunately, the company went out of business at the end of that year. A year and more after that, I was browsing the newsgroup for old times' sake, searching on keywords relating to our company and products. Lo and behold someone had very recently posted a message in which he referred to the teleportation device in the Mach-Buster!

I was -- and remain -- utterly delighted that my tall tale had that kind of staying power.

Comments

[toesontheground.livejournal.com]

:)

Did they really go bust, or did the government take them over and shut them down so they could keep the alien landings quiet?

[qos.livejournal.com]

LOL!

Thank-you for that, Barry!

Unfortunately, the company's business plan had a fundamental flaw: we were an internet-only, direct-to-customer business and 90+% of the hobby rocketry community buys its rockets from hobby stores and places like WalMart. The bottom line was that we could not reach a large enough customer base to become profitable. As Director of Marketing, this was a major stress for me!

Which was a real shame, because we had some wonderful rockets, and a very strong customer-oriented operation.

It was a small company, run by one of my best friends, and I don't think I'm the only one who still feels like it was the best job I ever had.

[rocket-jockey.livejournal.com]

Dunno about that "wonderful rockets" bit ... I happen to know the chief engineer of that company, and he can't design his way out of a paper bag ;)

[qos.livejournal.com]

His problem was that he was trying to crib from his office mate and she couldn't design her way out of a paper bag.