Great Balls of Fire!

As threatened, more gems from the Innovations catalogue... This one the Portable Plasma™ trumpeted thus:

Harness the Power of Lightning

Imagine, a wireless sphere of magical plasma light you could take anywhere!

Yep, it's something I've imagined often: Oh, look at the time. I'd best be off to buy some wainscotting. If only I had a wireless sphere of magical plasma light to take with me!

Portable Plasma™ creates a dramatic display of multicoloured light under a hand-blown glass dome.

Surely that's a mouth-blown glass dome. Or a hand-made glass dome. I've heard of things being overblown or fly-blown but hand-blown? What the bejeezus does that mean. These Innovations copywriters are world-class language manglers.

Fascinating to watch, the dome begs to be touched - just watch the bolts of glowing light follow your every move.

Now I've seen these plasma thingies, and I think it's stretching matters just a teeny bit to call the little fluffy flickering tendrils of plasma bolts. A bolt is something that screeches from the sky like an express train on crack and splits telegraph poles in two, whilst simultaneously fracturing your eardrums with a kind of atmosphere-tearing-asunder kind of sound. These little wimpy finger tickling lighting effects are not bolts. There's a word for that kind of exaggeration. It's called bullshit.

And while we're on the topic of exaggeration, is it a bit much to be claiming that with this gadget you'll be able to harness the power of lightning. I mean this implies, surely, that you're going to be able to get the awesome power of genuine lightning and do something with it, like strike down the febrile moron with the leaf-blower who lives across the road into a charred smoking mass of barbecue fuel.

Great for parties or gatherings or use it on any shelf as a mesmerising display.

Oh man, I'm really bummed that I don't get invited to those kinds of parties.

"Hey Daddyo, this new Portable Plasma™ is a gas! That Singing Trout™ that Maynard had at his clambake last week is so squaresville when you put it next to this!"

I also like to imagine the kind of gatherings it might be great for. I bet they involve robes and goat's blood. Or even more unsettlingly: Tupperware.

Requires 4 "AA" batteries (not included).

And surely, after all the hyperbole, this is where the reality-check kicks in; we're expected to believe that 4 AA batteries are going to give us the juice to harness the power of lightning.

Excuse my skepticism. Next they'll be trying to tell us that a Lava Lamp contains real lava.