‘Tis the season to get things for free, or give out lots of things, depending what side of the fence you’re on. For the sake of the public good, I’m going to review things people give me. You’re welcome.
Gift number one is the KosherClock, from the people who brought you the Shabbos Lamp (slogan: “One great idea, loads of ridiculous ones”). It’s difficult for me to own a KosherClock, because I made fun of it when it came out. A cheap travel alarm clock, re-branded as “kosher” and overpriced? But here it is, so onwards with the review:
The design is simple. A Chinese made molded plastic clock, with a hinge connecting a picture frame. Speaker on the back, a side switch changes the ring sound from mute, to message (more on that in a bit) to a buzzer. The picture frame comes with a picture of a little frum boy, who judging from his body posture and expression, really needs to pee, or just has a stomacheache. I haven’t yet figured out how to change the picture. Looks like you have to pry the inner frame out with a screwdriver or something. Just as well, because I don’t have a picture of anyone to put in. I guess I’ll just keep the little boy, and use it to remind myself to pee when I wake up.
The clock comes with a prerecorded message that you can change. The message is thirty seconds of what I think is music. It sounds like when you try to record a song from the radio by pressing record on your phone, then trying to play it back through a dead rabbit inside a garbage can, only worse fidelity. And its at an ear-splitting volume. Did I mention there’s no volume button? The puny speaker sounds like its screaming for mercy everytime I hit play. The music itself sounds like the middle part of any random Jewish song. I’d change it, but like the picture of the little boy, I don’t have anything to change it to. The box suggests “It’s Monday Abba, time for early minyan” but if I woke up to that, I’d be more concerned when I became a father than making it to early minyan.
The big selling point of the clock is that it has five, count ’em, five alarms. Unfortunately, I don’t really lead an existence that involves going to sleep four times during the day between getting up in the morning and bedtime. The ring turns off after one minute, which is the selling point of it being a Shabbos clock. Which begs the question, why didn’t they call it the “ShabbosClock”? KosherClock to me seems to imply that pedestrian alarm clocks are somehow treif.
It’s a nice gift, and for those of you needing a clock with multiple alarms and an incontinent little boy, I highly recommend it.
A Frum Punk 