Backed Or Whacked: The Eyes Have It
Editor’s note: Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive. Each column will look at crowdfunded products that have either met or missed their funding goals. Follow him on Twitter @rossrubin.
In last week’s Backed or Whacked, I discussed watches, one of the mixes of fashion and function that many wear every day. Another example of such a combination is eyewear, where crowdfunding endeavors have taken approaches that range from high art to high volume in pursuit of recreational glasses.
Combine the ideas of tape, glasses and nerds, and most people come up with a makeshift repair job resulting from bullying. Rather, the Hacker Glasses fill the lens area with many tiny adjacent and concentric loops of colored tape positioned so that you can see through the holes, creating a sort of stained-glass effect. However, how the spectacular spectacles, yours for a $150 pledge, affect vision is curiously not addressed directly by the team. In the campaign video, one person puts on a pair of Hacker Glasses before stepping into his car to drive. The scene cuts, though, leaving us to imagine a resulting Death Race-like trail of wanton destruction.
They would also be available in some questionable color combinations. Risking impropriety, only one backer was willing to say Oakley-Dokley, as the campaign has raised only $25 of its $8,000 in its dwindling hours.
Backed: Urushi Wooden Sunglasses. Last week’s column noted the bamboo Big Face Woody watch, the campaign for which is now winding down. Cycle, the Kyoto-based creator of the urushi wooden sunglasses, takes its love of wood-based products to the next level.
The resulting eyewear, which uses toothpicks as hinges, is complemented by an indigo-dyed protective bag and matching hexagonal case/tray, which is also made with urushi. Sorry, nature lovers, the lenses themselves are plastic. Now in its final hours after clearing its $10,000 funding goal, the sunglasses are available for $199 or $299 with the case and are due to ship in April.