You might blame MAG for whatever, but their marketing is marvelous

yesterday talked with a co-worker. She would like to get a small light for navigating around / reading at night.
So I showed her the Triton I had with me...

1st thing that came to her mind: wow, this light is bright!
2nd: is this one of these Man-? Magic-? These lights named with an "M"?

Doh, has never ever seen a quality light, even less chance for a Led-light, but, like EVERONE, immediately thinks: strong light, quality feeling --> must be MAG.

MAG-Marketing is definitley the bomb!

(if they ever get the LED models to work properly (cuz thats the reason I see, why they still do not even offer specs), we will be shown a genious, worldwide "push" never seen in flashlight business)

That and the destruction of many small CPF companys as well as monopolization of the flashlight market thumbsdow)...

But thats my opinion there and what I think might happen

So you never sale a completed flashlight. That is how you win that game

I, for one..

Oh Hell, just read my sig

Mag Instruments got a lot of "fluff" I must say. . .

<while showing a girl at work my ultrafire light, explaining that I use it ti light up addresses>

"that's one of those mag lights isn't it?"

Wasn't really sure what to say and kinda paused for a moment. She responded again before I could gather some words:
"It's metal, so it's a maglight right?"

At that point I was even more perplexed, she believed that maglight, was the sole manufacture of flashlights made from metal. I kinda continued to pause trying to figure out how to answer her questions without making her feel bad for being so incredably ignorant:
"Police use those maglights right?"

So I said, "well, yes, some police use magchargers made by maglight, but many are using other options as well"

Explained that my ultrafire was a china made clone of a Surefire. I didn't take that conversation too far... but I am still very amazed that much of the general public, immediatally thinks maglight whenever they see any metalic flashlight, or quality flashlight.

Someone once told me his dad's 6D Mag was better than my Surefire G2. He said it could light up a lake... and I asked if he could put it in his pocket.

Mag does extremely well promoting its propaganda. I can only look forward to seeing how they figure out how to sell their more expensive LED lights to the public.

Yeah, but can you beat someone over the head with your G2?:lolsign:
I think that is the only think mag has going for them.

ADDICTED2LITE said:

Yeah, but can you beat someone over the head with your G2?:lolsign:

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Of course I can. In any case, I'd be more afraid to hit someone with a MagC or MagD because of the increased heft. I wouldn't want to split skulls when a simple KO would work just as well.

Remember folks, a Mag is actually pretty good quality for the price. Unlike notorious brands like Bose, where marketing stands in for R+D.

Basicaly for an average human that doesnt know about flashlight development or evolution assumes that the best of the best flashlight are Mag.
Mag is the best there is, the most expensive, and the best there will ever be cause all other flashlight are bright orange plastic that house a couple of D cell as assume by non flashaholic.
Maglights are the more expensive lights that could be bought readily off the shelves and are usually in nice display cases or shelves.

No question about it: at $10-$20, the Maglight is a great light at the right price for a lot of consumers. It's perfect for people who want a solid, dependable flashlight that uses common batteries and is within their budget. Who are those people? Almost all of the 360 million citizens in these United States.

It's always hard - when you're an expert in *any* subject - to step back and put yourself in a layman's shoes. But most people see flashlights as a simple tool, and, like anything, want the least expensive tool for the job (so long as it's reliable.)

That said, let's look at how a Mag compares to any one of our favorites...like the Surefire 6P.

Batteries: MagLights use standard batteries that everyone is familiar with and can be cheaply purchased at their local stores. "CR-123 batteries? What are those? Holy crap, a pair costs $10 at the local market and only powers yore fancy Shurefier flashlight for 50 minutes?! Why the heck did you buy one of those?" Oh, but you can get them online for less. "Huh? I can't just buy replacements when I go to the gross'rie store? I gotta order from a special internet site just to get the light to work again once it goes out?"

Quality: The average consumer could care less about quality annodizing (and probably hasn't even heard the word). As long as their light powers up, people don't care how it looks. Mags, for all their faults, are very durable. I have yet to break a MagLight. (Sure, it scuffs, but most people don't use their lights as shelf queens!) And since Mag has been around for a while and has good name recognition, people feel comfortable buying it because they know that if it breaks the company will be around to fix it.

Price: All you have to do is remember the looks you got the first time you told your friends you paid $50 for a flashlight. I can't even *imagine* telling someone I paid $200 for a McLux PD; my god, Robin Williams himself couldn't make them laugh that hard. No matter how exceptional your light's brightness, runtime, or regulation, that's an obscence amount to pay for a simple flashlight. (Except to us flashaholics. Don't shoot the messenger, though: I just bought my first PD!).

One really interesting thought on the price issue. I think us flashaholics run into an especially unique problem: we're trying to explain the obsession with a tool that most people already know something about. Now, a fisherman can easily explain why he needs an expensive $500 reel: it has smoother action, less drag, etc. To an audience that has no experience with reels, there's no real-life comparison: they have to take the fisherman at his word. But everyone's used a flashlight, so they have an experience to compare it to. Having used a flashlight before, it's hard for them to see how yours is worth 5, 10, or even 20 times as much - even if it has some cool extra features.

Regulation and runtime: "Regu-what? Yeah, Maglights get dimmer, but they still put out light 8 hours later while I'm stuck on the side of the road. Can yore fancy light do that?"

Availability: Anywhere, in any store, all across America. Folks, don't forget that America's a huge place. Selling 500 custom flashlights to our unique community is a great achievement, but literally *millions* of people own MagLights. People are comfortable with what they know, and Maglight has the distribution and name recognition to make them comfortable. All hobbies have specialty vendors that make products cheaper and with better quality than the "big" vendors. But discovering those vendors (and the reason those vendors' products are better) takes time. For people who don't want to spend time learning the intricacies of flashlights, "MagLight" stands for a universally available, reliable flashlight.

So that's my 2 cents. Actually, after looking over my voluminous post, it looks more like $1.35 and some assorted Canadian currency.

Don't get me wrong: I'd take any of my flashlights over a Mag. But they make a very reliable flashlight at a very reasonable price. They have long runtimes, good throw, and objectively, I just can't fault any average person for buying one.

- FITP

bfg9000 said:

Remember folks, a Mag is actually pretty good quality for the price. Unlike notorious brands like Bose, where marketing stands in for R+D.

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Very true! I've made a similar comparison in the past myself.
And I just remarked to a friend this evening how decent the build quality is on my 3D for such a big and cheap light.

ARGH! im so tired of magbashing!!!!!! you know what, you try to make a light that runs on alkaline batteries has an incandescent bulb, decent runtime/ brightness, cheap enough to be appealing to the masses, well constructed and tough lights. you know what you would make??? A MAGLIGHT!!!!! why are you guys bashing maglights? i just dont understand it they make a GOOD product that is VERY popular and whose name has become another word for Quality. TOYOTA makes cheap reliable cars, Bugatti makes VERY nice VERY high proformance cars, but no one is mad at toyota because they sell more cars that bugatti. perhaps magbashing occors to make the owners of high preformace lights feel better about themselves and their purchases. look at all of the magmods! if mag didnt make a quality host all of us wouldnt be shoving high preformace parts into them. i went to look to see how much i could get a mag2c for, at home depot, $14!!! i thought to myself, holy crap just the aluminum body of this flashlight is worth more than that!

make a light for $14 that is better than a maglight and more useable to the the general public. THEN market the lights better than mag. THEN actually manage to sell more of them than mag does. until that happens, guess what maglights will always be king.

im sorry if this post is offensive to anyone. I made it in a fit of frustration, it just seems to me that peoples views about a good product are off kilter. on this forum mag is an underdog and ill be damned if i wont back the underdog!

let the flaming begin

I like throwing out some trashing words to big companies who seem to focus more efforts on their legal team and advertising, than their product... funny that bose has already been mentioned. They really stand at the peak of brilliance in the area of selling a price tag and a name rather than a product. (a bose "cube" costs less than $1 to manufacture, BTW).... at least the maglight has good machine quality, and metal, and druability. We can't blame maglight for becoming the most "popular" "quality" flashlight, they fit the bill, we have only to blame the people who have supported them by buying their product, at least the maglight, is worth the money, especially when sold "on sale" for arond $10 a pop. Everyone who bought windows, and is now stuck in an eternal cycle of viruses, spyware, adware, patches, updates, and crashes, didn't get their moneys worth, imo.,..

Mags are like Model Ts, in that the company has invested all their efforts into their manufacturing arm to increase efficiency and reduce manufacturing costs. A Maglight is now sold for a tiny fraction of the price it cost in 1979 (without batteries or spare bulb then), when you consider the value of a 1979 dollar is ~$2.73 in 2006 dollars. Meaning in 1979, it cost the equivalent of ~80 2006 dollars! Likewise, the Model T originally cost $999 in 1908 but dropped in price to under $300 by 1927 due to increases in production efficiency and economies of scale.

Like the Model T, the Mag was the first high quality product of its kind intended to be mass produced in a quantity that allowed the price to drop to levels affordable by the common man. They are both examples of the industrial revolution.

Sure, they've diverted their R+D budget to buy lawyers, making their product line frozen in time for the last quarter century, but that is their right. The original design has been proven sound and the quality is as good as it has ever been for an incredibly low price. It's literally as if you could buy brand new 1979 Corvettes made today for $1700. In comparison, the much improved 2006 model has a base of $43690, but I know a lot of people who would jump at the chance to own a new classic for much less.

Am I the only one who has had this happen...

Whenever I show someone one of my smaller lights (E2e, L4, PM6 LED, etc...) they ALWAYS try to turn the bezel to turn it on, like it's a Mini-MagLite.

...and I can't even really fault them for using their lawyers. A product's more than the cost of its raw parts; something that costs only a few cents to produce may have taken thousands of hours to properly design. That intellectual effort has to be rewarded somehow!

If Mag had no protection for its intellectual property, any 3rd party could simply ride the coattails of Mag's innovation and more cheaply produce what Mag worked so hard to develop. (Oh wait, that's what the knockoffs actually do!) Knockoffs get the benefit of a cheap production phase without having to incur the burdensome costs of innovation. Hell, it's not just Mag that's protecting that kind of intellectual property - it's every company out there that innovates.

Okay, so Mag's last great innovation may have been a decade ago - but patent law gives you something like 18 years to enjoy your monopoly. If you want that part changed, you'll have to tell it to Congress.

It'd be kind of fun to see exactly what Mag has patented...and when those patents expire. Poor Mag - LEDs are going to be a whooooole new ballgame for `em.

- FITP

vtunderground said:

Am I the only one who has had this happen...

Whenever I show someone one of my smaller lights (E2e, L4, PM6 LED, etc...) they ALWAYS try to turn the bezel to turn it on, like it's a Mini-MagLite.

Click to expand...

That exact thing happened to me last week showing off my L4. But then she said after seeing how white it was "Oh you have one of those new Xenon lights"

SaturnNyne said:

Very true! I've made a similar comparison in the past myself.
And I just remarked to a friend this evening how decent the build quality is on my 3D for such a big and cheap light.

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Just like this situation, the Bose analogy is not understood by the masses. A fellow running a set of Monoblocks and Wilsons WATTS will definately but the typical BestBuyer won't.