The Ultimate Review

Occasionally there are products introduced to the marketplace that are so bad they inspire creative genius in the reviewer in order to convey just how utterly bad they are. Such a product is the Energizer Candle, and such a creative genius is Rob Beschizza. Originally recorded with a wonderful soundtrack, the transcription that follows can never fully convey the absolute and utter contempt Rob feels towards the Energizer Candle. Like experiencing Shakespeare in the original Klingon, you must experience this review in the original Beschizza.

In more than a decade as a reporter, technology correspondent, columnist and managing editor of one of the world's most lavishly marketed technology blogs, I've never come across a product quite like Energizer's flickering LED candle lights.

This is the worst consumer electronics product I've encountered in my career.
The possibility that Energizer itself developed this supernaturally useless device is inconceivable.

Someone there was perhaps briefed on a market need, procured a supplier, took a look at the results and then thought "Fuck it! We'll sell it anyway."

Its light is simultaneously feeble and ugly, so dim that it illuminates nothing and appears to glow brown.

The flickering pattern programmed into the LED controller is neither predictable nor realistic, but a kind of irritating staggered synthetic fake.

Designed to resemble smoked glass, the exterior shell is an inexpensive plastic the color and texture of semen.

A crude manufacturing seam scored up the side of each mediocre example.

To call these candles at all is an insult to every pig that died to yield the tallow fat that lit the literary and creative endeavours of mankind up until the electric era.

In its absolute and irremediable failure to do anything at all, Energizer's crappiest product of all time represents the final achievement of technology to return us to the barbaric and lightless dawn of civilization.

Transcribed from Rob Beschizza's original review on Soundcloud.