October 12, 2017

Doctor Web has already published material on the various amusing artefacts being sold in Russian online shops—everything from evil-eye-thwarting thread to devices that employ magnets and black magic to help car owners save on gas. We continue to research this captivating topic. Today we will tell you about curious novelties from online shops offering questionable goods.

As we all know, technology keeps forging ahead. Judging by the content of spam ads, evil-eye-thwarting red threads have gone out of style lately. Network fraudsters have replaced them with miraculous amulet coins that supposedly bring wealth and good luck.

Every aspect of this magical product is wondrous inside and out: beginning with the story invented by mysterious copywriters about the young Russian tsar who was given a miracle-working, enchanted amulet by the deacon of an orthodox monastery (such an amulet was a bulletproof sign of the most real kind of sorcery— sorcery that back in those days was rewarded with a ceremonial impaling before scores of onlookers), truly ending with the amusing description of the amulet itself. We pass our mic to the network merchants: “According to ritual, the amulet is manufactured and tied to a specific person, to their Name. The ritual is based on the force of prayers and ancestors. A tsarist coin serves as the basis for the amulet’s creation and the ritual’s conduction. We use only authentic coins from Tsarist times!”. Judging by the Chinese characters on the head side of these “amulets”, these real tsarist coins from ancient times were bought small wholesale exclusively on AliExpress, from where they were delivered to the court. Fraudsters assure readers that the miraculous amulet “attracts positive cash flow” (and, most probably, defers negative cash flow straight into the pockets of network fraudsters). As a result, whoever owns this trinket will surely find a well-paid job, repay their debts, win the lottery, build a house, grow a new liver, and develop chakras on the back of their head. We have no doubt that purchasing the amulet coin will bring wealth. Exclusively to those who sell it for a price that is one and half dozen times higher than on Celestial Empire’s online shop.

As the character of a popular fiction series once said, winter is coming. And when it is cold, a beard keeps a guy warm. So second place in our current ratings of absurd online goods is taken by the most authentic “serum for beard growth”.

Sellers of this magical elixir claim that growing such a beautiful beard is really possible; as proof of their statement, they offer a lightly airbrushed stock photo of a man who looks half Santa, half mujahideen. “Olga Alekseeva, a top-class hairdresser”, completely agrees with that. Her enthusiastic review is posted on a website of network merchants—it looks like she has already grown a long and silky beard with the help of this magical “serum” and is now a circus star. Unfortunately, none of Doctor Web’s specialists have had a chance to try this magical “serum for beard growth”, but they will try it first chance they get on an employee who is specially prepared to take on this challenge.

Folk tales say that advertising is usually untruthful. We know at least one example of truthful advertising—the slogan “Everything will stick!”, used by the sellers of an instant adhesive. This superglue does bond absolutely everything together: fingers, hair, clothes—everything except what we’d planned on bonding initially. However, online merchants offer a unique and modern solution for this problem: wondrous instant superglue at the price of a welding machine!

The magical superglue, which is produced, as judged by its price, from an alloy of gold and platinum, has unique properties: it hardens in five seconds and works on various materials, such as plastic, wood, and glass. In other words, it can do exactly the same thing as ordinary 20-ruble glue, except it is 100 times more expensive. It is hard to say whether this unique offer is in demand, but it gave us a good laugh.

Among the other entertaining products advertised by spammers lately, a wonderful device with the mysterious name “multi slicer” is worth a mention. No, it is not a cross between a glass cutter and a multicooker. It is a multifunctional device that has a razor handle, a grater blade, and the price of an airplane.

“For an affordable price you will get a device to slice produce”,—the online merchants inform everybody who has never held a kitchen knife in their life. It is true that slicing produce is a hi-tech process that can only be managed by a specialist with a higher culinary education, and exclusively using this special, certified “device”. But the most important thing is that the “multi slicer” is so omnipurpose, it can even be washed (!) in a dishwasher. Just think of it! Can you imagine? True—today’s dishwasher manuals state that any kitchen utensil can be washed in the dishwasher. One of our employees once accidently washed his IPhone, and nothing terrible ended up happening to the dishwasher. In contrast to the IPhone. So we are not planning on buying a “multi slicer” yet—we are going to wait until technology reaches the level where it can be washed with a sponge in an ordinary sink.

To conclude this article, we would like to remind our readers once again that questionable offers published on all kinds of trading platforms should be treated with skepticism and a healthy dose of humor. And we, in turn, will continue to add the website addresses of such network “miracle traders” to our database of non-recommended websites.