My New Radio

[turkeytop]

Picked this one up today, at a local Surplus Shop. It's transparent case and other unique features satisfy the special demands of a small and exclusive niche market.

Does anyone care to speculate on the nature of this specialized market?

[turkeytop]

Well, either you're all stumped, or you just don't give a damn.


In case you are stumped, I'll give a clue. The exclusive group of users for this product, is not the much maligned 1% that have been tho object of the occupy protests. Nor is it the 99%.

This demographic could best be characterized as the 3%.

[Audio]

The pigmently challenged?

[Larkin]

Turkey, I hope you enjoy the radio, but man, if that radio was a dog, it would look like this:

[turkeytop]

Turkey, I hope you enjoy the radio, but man, if that radio was a dog, it would look like this:

There's a good reason for its unusual appearance.

Another Clue


The users of this radio would be sporting some crudely done tattoos.

[Larkin]

Ah! A prison radio!

[turkeytop]

About 3% of U.S. citizens are incarcerated. That represents a market of about 8 million. Manufacturers like Sony, Sangean, JWIN and others have decided to tap into that market by modifying existing models to meet rigid prison requirements. One of those requirements is a transparent case, to prevent smuggling of drugs or weapons.

[River Rat Dad]

I think we should just pipe in Wayne Newton songs 24/7 in all our prisons.
My gut says that would greatly reduce the recidivism rates.

[Larkin]

That might increase the suicide rate!

[Audio]

The users of this radio would be sporting some crudely done tattoos.

This could be nudists too...

[turkeytop]

I think we should just pipe in Wayne Newton songs 24/7 in all our prisons.
My gut says that would greatly reduce the recidivism rates.

That would be cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the prisoners rights.

[umfan]

Hey, Wayne ain't half bad!

[turkeytop]

I bought the radio just for the novelty of it, not expecting it to be much of a radio. But I'm really impressed by its performance on both AM and FM. It's a good radio. Because a telescopic antenna could be snapped off and potentially be used as a weapon, it doesn't have one. If you look at the end view, you can see the internal, hectically wound FM antenna. In addition to the ferrite rod, AM antenna, it also has an input for an external antenna.

Because I bought it in the Surplus Store, I only paid $12.99. I expect it would be priced considerably higher at the prison gift shop.

[turkeytop]

So I've had the radio a full year now. Because I bought it for $12.99 in a Surplus Store, I wasn't sure how well it would work. For that reason I didn't want to make a large investment in batteries. It uses 3 D size, so I just stuck in some Dollar Store non-alkaline batteries. Surprisingly, it turned out to be a pretty decent radio.

Because I have too many radios already, I've set a rule for myself that every new radio I get, I have to use it for something. So I decided to make this my bathroom radio. Accept for the three months that it sat unused in our cold house, while we were away last winter, it has been used for about 15 minutes every day. And it's still running on those first Dollar Store batteries.

[Audio]

"Every room should have a radio."

[turkeytop]

"Every room should have a radio."

or three.

[umfan]

Using a prison radio in the head. Not the most pleasant image but I'm glad this worked out for you.