The Not So Airtight Air Climber

So the quality isn’t that great, but at least we get the best of both worlds: you don’t have to click a link and we can still be as lazy as ever. It works out. You must have by now noticed that the above video is not the complete video, but we imagined that the complete one would not greatly add anything to this post. We seem to have enough material with the abridged version.

To start things off, we must ask: what exactly is a “Limited Lifetime Warrantee”? Does this mean that the lifetime (either of the machine or you [or both?]) is limited, and they can only warrant that limited life? We are not quite sure why they have a limited lifetime warrantee and why they would proudly announce that in their commercial.

It’s not just the legal mumbo-jumbo that gets us; the pun “airtight” (used only once in the above video) is poorly constructed as well. What exactly does it mean to have “airtight abs”? We suppose it means air cannot penetrate your abs, thereby sealing in the freshness of your intestines. The funny thing is, in order for your muscles to function, you would need air to circulate in them. That is essentially what blood does in your body… and they think they can just rattle off “airtight abs” and we would just nod our heads in agreement.

We also have a ridiculous acronym which the marketing department for the Air Climber has decided we should just accept without a word in protest: APT. What is Air Power Technology? This acronym is by far the worst we have encountered to date. First of all, “apt” is actually a word, so that could be confusing in certain circumstances. Second of all, they are trying to pass off centuries-old technology as something modern and up-to-date simply by hiding the words behind their initial letters. People have been using bellows to stoke fires since the advent of the chimney, and now they’re trying to tell us that the Air Climber is state-of-the-art equipment? We don’t buy it.

Really, though, it’s not just the inept APT and vague phraseology that are the heart of what is wrong with the Air Climber, although they are symptomatic of the poor marketing endemic to all ab machines: It is the demographic itself. If you look closely at the above video, there is an average ratio of four women to every man. Clearly they are feeding off the presumed fact that women are insecure about their bodies, and if they show enough women with lean stomachs (who probably didn’t use the Air Climber to get the bodies they have now), then they will sell more bicycle pumps to the unwitting public. This is not just a problem with the Air Climber, it is characteristic of all ab machine infomercials. They generally market to women by showing a predominant number of women in their advertisements, and, wherever possible, have women spokeswomen spouting out inanities in hopes of raking in profits on pieces of plastic filled with—in this case—hot air. (Of course, Sean T. and T. Little are exceptions here.) What makes this all the more horrendous is that the stupid puns, inaccurate acronyms, fake charts and graphs, and monotonous testimonials belie the fact that the creators of the Air Climber and other ab machines think women are generally stupid enough to fall for flimsy marketing gimmicks and preposterous lies. They assume that people will gloss over glaring inconsistencies and fine print because their desire for an unattainable, perfect body will conquer the modicum of rationality that they possess and goad them into purchasing these things they don’t need. To ensure their audience is thoughtless, they pad their commercials with how fun the machine is, how technological it is, how easy it is to use, and how certain the results are when none of those things can be proven to be any better than the multitude of free workouts one can do. Even the name of the machine itself is inaccurate: the Air Climber? You’re staying in place for crying out loud! Are we supposed to actually believe this tripe?

Phew! Sorry about that, O Reader. That was a rare impassioned moment you were privy to. Our point, however, still stands. This machine is stupid and you should not get it.

Not wanting to end on a depressing note, we do have to give the Air Climber kudos in one aspect of their commercial: their Digital Training Computer. They actually show their “computer” on screen (and, with the beauty of YouTube, you can pause and take a good look at it at 2:11) and you can see clearly that it is just a counter with a timer. The nice big red button that looks like it could have launched an entire nuclear arsenal in a '50s movie is a good touch. We are certain “MODE,” “RPMS,” and “SCAN” are just random letters they put together because they ordered too much white paint. Thanks, Air Climber.