Products

Call it a lust for rust. The plastic bin is piled to the top with tarnished metal tins, partially hidden beneath a table displaying 1930s hardware at Pasadena Architectural Salvage. Store manager Gayle Stoner pulls out the box and reveals vintage 35-millimeter film tins. Embossed with names such as DuPont and Eastman Kodak Co., the two-piece canisters once held feature film reels. "That's how they shipped movies all over the place," she says.

Starbucks Corp. said Thursday that it would unveil a new instant coffee as part of its attempt to turn around sluggish sales and shed its reputation for pricey lattes. The Seattle company has been working on the product for more than 20 years and has a patent pending on the technology that will allow it to "absolutely replicate the taste of Starbucks coffee in an instant form," spokesman Vivek Varma said in an e-mail to employees.

Whether it's seen as a clever little gadget to help a woman keep a secret or a devilish deception that threatens Islam, the Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit is not welcome in Egypt. The kit allows a bride who is not a virgin to pretend that she is. A pouch inserted into the vagina on her wedding night ruptures and leaks a blood-like liquid designed to trick a new husband into believing that his wife is chaste. It's a wink of ingenuity to soothe a man's ego and keep the dowry intact.

A new book on advertising reminds me of a joke William Shatner once told on "Saturday Night Live": "Star Trek" is really popular in Japan, where it's known as "Sulu, Master of Navigation." That same self-glorying attitude is on display in "Baked In: Creating Products and Businesses that Market Themselves" by Alex Bogusky and John Winsor. Running at a mere 150 pages of big type, the book is the ad guys' parochial perspective on why advertising and marketing so often fall flat.

With debt-burdened American consumers cutting back in response to the recession, many U.S. companies are increasingly looking outward, toward fast-developing countries such as China, India and Brazil. But instead of seeing these nations primarily as cheap producers of goods to sell to Americans, U.S. corporate leaders see them as potential customers for American products and services. That shift, which has been underway for several years but has intensified sharply during the downturn, comes as vast numbers of families in these emerging economies are moving into cities and spending like never before to improve their living standards.

When it comes to beauty products, sometimes ignorance is bliss. Snake venom, bird droppings, snail serum, cow dung and whale vomit are but a few of the industry's extreme and off-putting ingredients that one might be shocked to know can be slathered about your body. Hair products are no exception to this somewhat creepy phenomenon. Consumers hoping for a hair miracle are willing to pay extra for deep conditioners and conditioning "treatments" that promise an enviable crowning glory -- even when they contain rather odd-seeming ingredients such as placenta, caviar and hemp.

Brooke Shields beams into the camera, her sea-green eyes framed by long, dark lashes, doing the cha-cha and helping a friend blow out birthday candles. In the ubiquitous commercials for the lash-growing product Latisse, the actress and model is saying what everyone wants to hear: have long, fluttering lashes, and your life can be gorgeous too. It's a premise that seems to be taking hold. In an otherwise lackluster beauty industry -- according to research company the NPD Group, retail sales of U.S. prestige beauty products were down 7% in the first half of this year -- lash enhancers are all the rage.

Chicken, fake and real, looks to be a target of several consumer and nutrition groups. The Center for Science in the Public Interest is acting as co-counsel on a lawsuit filed Thursday by an Arizona woman accusing Quorn Foods Inc. of not disclosing on labels the fact that some people have serious allergic reactions to the main ingredient in its Quorn line of meat substitutes. Quorn is derived from a protein-rich fungus, which the company grows in large vats. The fungus, fusarium venenatum, was discovered growing in a field in Buckinghamshire, England, in the late 1960s and developed as a food product.

The scene: A vast crowd at a political rally raises a tumult of adulation. Triumphal music rises. Graphics of President Obama's image slide across the scene as we hear the now-familiar voice say, "Change has come to America. . . . Our moment is now. . . . Yes we can!" The crowd chants. Slow pullback on the image of the White House. Announcer: "To commemorate the inauguration of our 44th president with a well-known American icon, introducing. . . ." Jingle: Chi-chi-chi Chia! Announcer: "Chia Obama!"

You can go broke going green. Solar panels cost tens of thousands of dollars. And who's got the money to buy all new appliances? Don't despair. There is a lot you can do, right now, with very little cash outlay, to make your home energy efficient and cheaper to run. Go fluorescent. You'll save as much as 75% on the lighting portion of your electric bill by losing those incandescent bulbs. Your old pool pump sucks. Energy, that is.