CHOICE Shonkys

The latest edition of CHOICE magazine features the 2010 Shonkys, "the year's dodgiest products, services and companies". This is yet another example of why I wish I worked for CHOICE, dagnammit. Here are some of my favourites:

• Nurofen - for producing a range of caplets (for migraine, period pain, back pain etc.) that are in fact, identical, and which cost almost twice as much as Nurofen Zavance, also identical.
• Coles - for their Curtis Stone MasterCreations $10 meals, including the $7.76 Coq au Vin, the price of which includes the Coq but not the Vin. CHOICE calls this "The CHOICE Shonky Ten buck blow-out", but I think they should have called it "The CHOICE Shonky for being a coq".
• Power Balance - for, well, doing nothing, for $60.
• LG - for rigging their fridges so that they went into energy saving mode under official testing conditions, artificially improving their energy star-rating.

Good work CHOICE. Always looking out for the little guy... by kicking the big guy in the nuts just as he's about to stick the little guy's head in the toilet.

Sometimes, however, the little guy doesn't want to be saved, and sticks his own head in the toilet and presses flush. As CHOICE says of Power Balance

After the Australian Skeptics demonstrated on national TV that it didn't do anything, sales skyrocketed.

Can I recommend a Placebo Band instead. Identical, only $2 and 100% guaranteed to work just as well as a Power Balance Bracelet.