Yak About It > Yak Nation > November 30, 2009

November 30, 2009

9 ¼ inch high resign nutcracker made in the likeness of Hillary Clinton. Stainless steel is secured in her inner thighs to grip and crack nuts in their shell.

Corkscrew Bill is a new twist on the classic corkscrew.

Both make for great gifts that will be sure to add some fun to your party!

The thought of Hillary Clinton as a nutcracker seemed inherently appropriate considering her background, and incredibly funny considering the naughtiness of my design. My background in the gift industry led to my confidence in the product selling well. I felt that her bid for the Presidency could secure media attention would help product exposure.

I started with Hillary Nutcracker and after I saw some success with the product I then came up with the idea for Corkscrew Bill. Being able to create a whole line of products through my company is my goal.

Inventor: Frank Freeman

I was born in North Minneapolis and now live in Rochester Minnesota. Through the years, my wife and I have owned a half dozen gift stores in the Southern Minnesota area. I entered the gift industry more than 30 years ago as a sales representative for a Los Angeles company marketing products in the gift industry. I became sales manager for the company and re-located to southern California. After a couple of years I left the company to start a small chain of gift stores. More recently, my partner and I started a company to market products which we create through our web sites, various catalogs, and brick and mortar stores.

There was a question which was debated throughout the creation, design, manufacturing, of the Hillary Nutcracker that impacted the packaging and design of the product itself: Was the product a pro or anti Hillary product? Experts cautioned us to be one or the other. They said if we marketed the product in the middle politically, we would fail. We decided to not have the product be mean spirited and let the consumer make that decision. The end result is that about 35% of the units sold are to pro Hillary customers and about 65% sold to anti Hillary customer.

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$17.95

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$17.95

Hillary Nutcracker & Corkscrew Bill

Carmelyn Calvert says:
Dec 17, 2009 at 3:12 pm

Question? Do Bill and Hilary get any royalty for use of their names and images? Political people have always been fair game for products. I'm sure they have a set of there own. Where's your sense of humor Arlene?

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Rob says:
Dec 5, 2009 at 5:41 pm

Looks like a good party item.

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Paul McGowan says:
Dec 2, 2009 at 3:40 pm

I would not purchase the item.

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yak man says:
Dec 2, 2009 at 12:29 pm

where is the pelosi whoopi cushion???

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Arlene Mathews says:
Nov 30, 2009 at 9:44 am

Disgusting.

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Spend less time in meetings with Bring TIM!®

Bring TIM! ® is the world’s first portable meeting cost calculator & clock that tallies the dollars spent during long company meetings. Simply enter the number of people in the meeting, estimate the average hourly wage, and press the large illuminated start button. Attendees see how much their meeting is costing in real time! Doubles as a clock. Batteries included.

Spend less time in meetings
Improve your bottom line
Keep meetings on track
Great gift idea for anyone that works in an office!

Got a meeting? Bring TIM! ® Because Time Is Money!

It all began one fateful day when I received a promotion and was asked to attend the weekly management meetings at our company. Little did I know that those Monday morning meetings would frequently last 4 hours or more! (Yikes!) I couldn’t help but think of all the real work piling up on my desk. It became painfully obvious that Time Is Money! (TIM!)

After enduring months of those marathon staff meetings, I knew there had to be a better way. The concept of Bring TIM! was born. To my amazement, no one had produced a Portable Meeting Cost Calculator so I set out to create one! Fast forward 3 years and here we are – invention in hand!

Inventor: Brad Johnson

Employee Benefits Advisor by day, inventor by night. Self proclaimed “Company Meeting Survivor”. Though I enjoy my work, the most important part of life is my family and my faith: Father of 3 kids (Ages 5, 7, and 11). My wife and I just celebrated our 16 year wedding anniversary.

I consider myself an ordinary, hard working American with a good sense of humor. For whatever reason, my mind is always coming up with various ideas that might improve upon things. However, this is the first product invention I have pursued beginning to end. I hope my invention can help bring some laughs to the workplace as well as help free people from the shackles of the unending business meeting!

While producing the invention, I worked with a local video production company to shoot a funny infomercial parody of Bring TIM! It was an absolute riot. I was laughing so hard that I had tears in their eyes. My “plan b” is if this invention thing doesn’t work out, I can pursue a hobby in making funny product videos for other inventors!

PS – To this day, the video has a noticeable typo in the title. However, we thought we would keep that to add some charater!

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$24.99

Bring TIM! Meeting Cost Calculator & Clock

Ms. M. says:
Jun 26, 2010 at 12:47 pm

I see the point. I love this product. It gets to the point! Why would anyone need a calculator and spreadsheet-it defeats the purpose of 'counting the cost.' I get it! I want to use this in our weekly family financial meeting. And a great object lesson to … more be used to show the cost lost on spending too much time on anything. i.e. driving around doing errands, t.v. watching, Internet surfing, etc. It makes me move from learning from the loss and reaching out to make money for my family and business. I get it! I get it! for example, I can start the TIM and see what it would cost to pay myself to clean my house, pay myself to cook, pay myself to do other things, or even calculate my RT drive to-fro work to include in a salary raise-especially counting the cost to be an inventor! Great product! FYI: I think the price needs to be higher-$35.00 USD.

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Dallas says:
Dec 7, 2009 at 10:09 pm

Awesome product. I know a LOT of people that I would get this for, and WILL!! Something that has a practical application that you can also use as a fun gift!

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TB says:
Dec 3, 2009 at 7:31 pm

As a guy who hates meetings - especially meetings to plan a meeting about a meeting like most of corporate America -- this would help the CEO realize..."hey - let's just send emails..." I know about 20 people I would buy this for!

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Steve says:
Dec 3, 2009 at 3:05 pm

Hook this up to a flat panel in the meeting room. The attendees will cut the BS short when they realize what the meeting is actually costing the company....

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Jay says:
Dec 2, 2009 at 7:44 pm

Paul sounds like he doesn't get it. I don't know anyone that has gone to a meeting w/ a spreadsheet. not realistic. This is a timer that actually means something.

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