Breath Capture

Status: Real (but possibly a publicity stunt)
image Breath Capture is a company that's selling air. Or more specifically, they're selling tubes. The customers themselves are supposed to provide the air by breathing into the tubes. They promote these tubes as a way to "Capture the breath of a loved one or friend and keep them close. Forever." So it's a gimmick, kind of like pet rocks, or buying land on the Moon. But what gets me is this claim the company makes on it site:

Breath Capture is a patent-pending method and apparatus for collecting human breath as a keepsake display.

They applied for a patent on this? It's just a tube into which you blow before putting the top on. How could this possibly be patentable? This made me suspicious enough to check out the site's registration info. Turns out it's registered to Thompson & Company, a Memphis-based marketing firm. So possibly Breath Capture is a stunt dreamed up by this marketing agency to prove that they can sell anything—even air. (Unless the Breath Capture company hired Thompson & Company to promote its product... but surely there can't be that much money in selling glass tubes that they could afford a fancy marketing agency.)

Advertising Business/Finance

Posted on Mon Nov 21, 2005



Comments

How far would they want to extend this thinking? There are other things produced by the human body that a(n) (odd) person might want to keep.

Hey, maybe they could start "breath banks" similar to sperm banks. Just thinking out loud here.
Posted by Cranky Media Guy  on  Mon Nov 21, 2005  at  01:24 AM
I can't imagine much breath getting into the tube. If it were really to work it would be more of a tube than a beaker.
Posted by Citizen Premier  on  Mon Nov 21, 2005  at  02:29 AM
So what if you were giving it to someone that you were planning on breaking up with? I suppose you could fill it with other expellable body gases.
Posted by Charybdis  on  Mon Nov 21, 2005  at  08:15 AM
According to legend, and perhaps really, when Thomas Edison was dying, Henry Ford got Edison's son to hold a test tube up to the famous inventor's mouth to capture his last breath. Ford idolized Edison and apparently believed on some level in the old idea that the soul exits the body by way of the last breath exhaled. This tube of air, sealed with a rubber stopper, is supposed to still be sitting around somewhere in one of Ford's museums. Many people have observed, however, that more or less all of the original air has probably migrated out of the tube by now. I guess that would depend on how good the seal was, which I don't know.
Posted by Big Gary in Muleshoe, Texas  on  Mon Nov 21, 2005  at  04:35 PM
so henry ford admired edison so much that he trapped edisons soul in a tiny bottle rather than let it go on to its rightful place in afterlife?

not how id immortalise my hero
Posted by joeodd  on  Tue Nov 22, 2005  at  01:03 AM
you can actually get patent if you find new way for using old things.
Posted by 8257  on  Tue Nov 22, 2005  at  02:08 PM
Money in glass stems? Put down that crack pipe now! I only wonder if they sell screens for the tubes too.
Posted by Paul  on  Mon Nov 28, 2005  at  08:40 AM
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