The other day, Lime was helping me look around the Korean online markets to see how prices for tank-topped water-coolers compare to offline prices. In my old place, in Jeonju, the water tank company let subscribers have the cooler for free if they bought a certain minimum number of bottles a month, and let me tell you, in a country where the taps don’t gush drinking water, a cooler is a wonderful convenience: it’s not only nice cold water on call, but also hot water on call, hot enough to make a cup of tea immediately, if you like.
Well, the final verdict was that they’re about W50,000 — around fifty bucks US — cheaper online, but it took us a while to figure this out. We saw all kinds of ads, but one of the strangest we ran across was for this little guy:
Now, for those of you who don’t live in Korea, or don’t want to jump to conclusions, let me clarify: yes, Cass is a kind of beer, a sort of lite beer. The TIP! noted is basically just that you can use this little penguin cooler not only for water, but for any liquid you care to fill up a tank with. (Beer and juice specifically are mentioned. Let’s hope there’s no pulp in the juice…) It’s a mini cooler, portable by the look of it, and I don’t know if it even plugs in, but the online markets are full of pictures of this thing. It’s really small, and Lime was going on about how cute it was. This, she realized, was one major reason why I’d never want it in my house, but man, the ad itself was funny. Can you imagine inviting your buddies over, and then offering them nice, cool beer from…
“Oh yeah, man, my funky new penguin beer cooler! Check this out! My girlfriend’s got one for orange juice in the other room, too. Isn’t it cute?”
Ah, the endless wonders of mysterious Asia…