SkyMall Explained Explained
Ever been on a long flight with nothing to read? If you said yes then you are a flat out liar. Why? Because of SkyMall. Invented in 1917 by then United States Senator Benjamin Franklin, SkyMall can be found in over 99.99% of airliners today, and 47% of Amtrak trains.
Originally, SkyMall was intended as a place for America’s best inventors to peddle their products to the uber elite – then the only type of elite allowed on airplanes.
Innovative Soup Warmer / Telegraph
Some early SkyMall products include the combination Telegraph/Bean Soup Warmer, Replica Woodrow Wilson Glasses (marketed as Vladimir Lennon glasses in the Western United States), and the still popular Garden Yeti.
Unfortunately around May 21, 2002, flying in a commercial airliner no longer was limited to the elite. Any bum with two nickles to rub together and a Southwest Airline’s hub within 500 miles was now able to take to the majestic skies. As SkyMall sales began to struggle with its new audience, some evil changes were afoot. Throwing the hopes and dreams of President Franklin right out the window, SkyMall executives decided to change the original intent of the catalog and market products to the poverty stricken middle management now most commonly flying. In addition to adding thousands of products related to hot dogs and pets, SkyMall knew it had to spin its existing product line in ways that regular Americans would appreciate. This is where SkyMall Explained comes in.
Senator Franklin First Published SkyMall in 1917
The SkyMall brass often lean heavily on their writers to “clean up” the descriptions, fearing the real power of their products will be used by the masses and not just the elites as President Franklin intended. This often forces close to dishonest pitches on unsuspecting airborne consumers. This is about as wrong as child abuse. In the case of the Harry Potter products sold, it actually could be considered child abuse.
It is our mission to get the accurate descriptions out so you are able to use the items you buy on SkyMall as they were originally intended. Using a combination of top notch espionage instrumentation (ironically enough, all purchased on SkyMall) Virgil and Trevor get their hands on non-censored drafts of the product descriptions and reveal them to all. In the few cases where we can’t get the original description – we hold a seance, or drink a large amount of Boone’s Fine Wine, and guess.
