Wallet Pix: New High-Tech Digital Way for Grandma to Bore the Hell Out of Everyone
October 4th, 2007 Paul Lucas
No doubt you’ve encountered the unfortunate situation where some old lady got you cornered and insisted on digging through her purse, whipping out her pocketbook, and showing you row after row of photographs of her children, grandchildren, and pets—a subject infinitely fascinating to her and bone-crushingly dull for you.
The latest dopey “short-form” infomercial being shown on TV will soon sweep all those old ladies boldly into the digital age. The product is called Wallet Pix and it’s billed as digital photo album the size of a credit card. (Click here to watch video of the Wallet Pix™ commercial.) The infomercial brags that Wallet Pix can fit in a shirt pocket. So whereas before some people may have escaped while granny was digging through her purse for her photos, now she can whip out Wallet Pix almost instantly—leaving the poor victims with no hope.
Wallet Pix can hold 58 photographs, which frankly doesn’t seem like nearly enough to bore someone out of their mind. But wait! With this special TV offer you can get 2 Wallet Pix for the price of 1! So that’s 116 photos—enough to bore any passersby with images of your distant relatives!
One flaw, however, may prevent Wallet Pix from becoming the iPod of the convalescent home crowd. To get the photos into WalletPix, the user must download digital photographs from their PC. Grandma has never figured out this “electronical computer machine thingy” and she never will. So if you insist in giving Wallet Pix as a gift be prepared to help your Nana get the pictures into the device from your PC. Otherwise Wallet Pix will end up in the back of the closet or the bottom of the deskdrawer—keeping company with all those Ronco products.
Actually computer savvy children would give this gift to their “older” non-computer literate parents, so connecting to a computer and downloading isn’t needed.
For the price of $19.99 it is much cheaper than an ipod, so besides seeing one view in your above review….maybe think out of the box!
Comment by GMK — October 9th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
GMK,
You are aware that this is a humor website, right?
Maybe WalletPix 2.0 will have a sensor that can detect when someone is bored to death from looking at pictures and will automatically shut off. That really would be thinking outside the box!
Comment by bookendz — October 9th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
WOW - I’m all about sarcastic blogs… I got a great chuckle out of your lil’ post here - I’m still going to buy one for myself, but at least now I can try to remind myself that no one other than ME wants to see my 50+ photos all at one time. I mean, seriouly, everyone I talk to has an attention span of five seconds (equivalent to about 3 photos - MAX). See? I lost YOU already… *wink*
Comment by Linnette — November 20th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Thanks for the comment, Linette. It’s nice to see that some people have a sense of humor about their purchases…unlike some other people I could mention.
Comment by Paul Lucas — November 20th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
I am a grandma and I HAVE figured out the “electronical computer machine thingy”. Please stop selling “older folks” short. Not all of us are ready for euthanasia. I would love to have a wallet-pix. Someone please tell Santa for me.
Comment by Kat — November 23rd, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Being an almost 75 year old grandfather, I take extreme umbrage at your slighting comments about “older folks.” I have probably forgotten more about computers than you will ever know…Alzheimer disease is a bitch! My graduate degree in Computer Science and my body of published works refute your “older folks” slander.
Comment by Thor X. Jones — December 3rd, 2007 at 6:55 am
Gee, I guess along with memories of past events, your sense of humor also fades rapidly once you pass 70.
Comment by Scott Mercer — December 15th, 2007 at 5:20 am
Soooooooo, is it a good product or not!?
Comment by Moracco Mole — December 29th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
How the hell am I supposed to know?
Comment by Paul Lucas — December 29th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Funny. But folks should also know that of three reviews on Amazon all three said it’s a piece of junk. The image quality is simply horrible. Why not make a joke about the fact that it’s particularly fun to annoy people with really BAD pix?
SB
Comment by Stephen — December 31st, 2007 at 6:34 am
I was given one of these as a gift. Stephen was right, the image quality is not what it is cracked up to be. So no snow pictures! Although easy to use, and something else to carry around. Still, I wouldn’t pay the money for it. I have a cell phone that hold more photos with better quality for less :) Happy Hunting!
Comment by Tigress — February 15th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
It works wonders for my use as a component in an art project. Took it apart and modded to automatically play photos for viewers of the sculpture when they depress a foot pedal. Excellent for full color photos that are not too bright to begin with. Very simple to use/mod device. USB plug and play (photo program loading) is EXTREMELY SIMPLE TO USE, with WinXP of course. Thanks Wallet Pix!
Comment by SH80KD — March 5th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
you’re weird
Comment by don't know — April 7th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I don’t know if anyone but me has done this, but try muting the commercial sound, and just watch the “actors”. I haven’t seen such overblown expression anywhere outside of mimes, german silent-films, and infomercials. That in iself is worth the watching.
Comment by Al Frank — June 20th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
To be fair, my grandma is 84 and uses the computer all the time. She doesn’t quite understand all of it (she’s still on AOL, which should give you some idea of what I mean) but knows enough to check her email, download photos, and print them. We used to communicate via AIM a few years back–for a while she couldn’t quite grasp the fact that she could talk to more than one person at once. Still, I think that’s pretty good.
Comment by Canaduck — March 25th, 2009 at 9:36 pm