Invincible
Posted by FirmWarez on 27 Sep 2012 in Blog | 0 comments
“What pretentious crap!” No, that’s wrong. “How pretentious!” Arg, that’s wrong too.
I mean, how pretentious is it to call your product line “invincible”? And to put this little knight guy on it?
Yet, their product is nearly as good as the claim. I’ve got a couple in the lab. Big, ugly, heavy desks, government surplus, doubling as workbenches. May I introduce you, my friends, to the “Invincible Metal Furniture Company“.
I’ve always liked these desks. When I first built Obfuscated Labs, I picked up a couple from “marketing and redistribution”, the name for our flyover state’s government surplus wing. I noticed one had a sticker of knight with a shield that said “Invincible”. I thought “gee, that’s funny, why would somepony put a sticker like that in their desk drawer?” Then I noticed BOTH of these had that sticker, and realized that it wasn’t just a joke or something. Then I found it, a tag that said: “Invincible Metal Furniture Company”. Kick ass. I had to check these guys out.
What more could you ask for? Made in the US. It comes assembled. Not a bunch of lego it together yourself crappy parts of a Scandanavian design actually made in Elbownia or where TF ever. Let me say that again friends, Made in the US. Not just the ancient examples I have, but the ones they are making, right now.
Turns out Invincible has been around for a while, in one form or another since 1904. They’ve made safe deposit boxes, filing cabinets, desks, and airplanes. Airplanes? Yeah.
Check out their history. I’ve got a couple of those “Modernaire” desks. Introduced in 1948. Metal, solid, strong enough to dance on, or put a ton of test gear on. What do you mean you don’t dance in your lab? What’s wrong with you? Anyway, these desks are like the M1911 Colt .45 of furniture: functional, classic, rugged good looks that nopony is gonna fuck with.
Why am I talking about this in my hack/make blog?
I’m not sure. But I love these desks. And I’ve got a lot of respect for anypony with the gall to call their product Invincible. And then go out and make it that way. In world full of plastic crap du jour, that’s supposed to be the best breakable plastic crap until tomorrow’s plastic crap with a bigger battery comes out, it is good to see things like this are still being made.
Invincible™ with great resolve and conviction boasts, “Proudly Manufacturing in the U.S.A. since 1913”. The products that our employees, our dealers and our sales leaders represent are indeed products we are proud of. We have seen together world wars, the Great Depression, men on the moon, national tragedy, and America’s extraordinary resolve and the ability to recover.
Hack. Make. Do it right. And if you can’t afford new ones, go to your local .gov surplus place and see if you can reuse&recycle one for your lab/shop/hackerspace. So what if you can’t tell if it’s 50 years old or was made yesterday? Sometimes timelessness is a style all it’s own.
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