There has to be a certain point in any hobbyist's experience where they decide they could do a better job than the manufacturer at delivering value.
Take this Tumble Outpost. We had been looking for children's gifts to post for you for this holiday season. At $97,510.00 USD the Tumble Outpost is less than a tube amplifier.
It has nothing to do with tumbling however, unless you include the lawn. Examining the product from the photo, one can determine that the slide is the only item difficult to manufacture at home.
It has to be every man's pleasure to make items for their children to play with, such as this play fort. There is not a lot of difficulty in the design, nor the construction. Just a lot of 2x4's, plywood, nails, posts, and some chains thrown in for good measure.
Now, anyone considering a $97,000 children's fort, likely has a number of $400,000 watches of which they consider no value.
We wish no disparagement to the salesman who sold this tumble fort, nor to the manufacture. We have seen similarly whimsical fantasy-piratesque contraptions floating off Vancouver's Science World attached to nice metal hulls, of no comparison to the works of Disney.
Perhaps when we hear Outpost we think of something Science Fiction, and admirable, or perhaps when we see Fort, we think of the folk homes of Marie Antoinette near Versailles.
Perhaps this is only inflation. $97,510.00 would of fully bought a middle-class home when we were children, 30 years ago. While housing prices have indeed gone up 5x, since, inflation has only doubled, and we doubt such a fort would of cost a little over $50,000 CDN.
Those that have no interest in construction can safely ignore this article on DIY / Do It Yourself. We write this, like everything, for yours and our benefit.
Yours,
John Paul Fiket
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