It must be getting close to Father’s day, because I’ve noticed that “lantern tv” has recently entered the top 10 terms used by people reaching this blog via a search engine.

I “posted about lantern tv radios”:http://www.geekfun.com/archives/000110.html during the holiday shopping season in 2002. I’d seen one on TV, and another at a store in the mall, and it really depressed me. At the time I wrote that “If your family gives you one, you need to change your life.”

It still strikes me as an incredibly sad gift to give or receive. It’s a gift for a father with no obvious passions (other than TV and ambivalent apocalyptic paranoia) from children who think the best gift option remaining is an ugly device with many functions none of which it does really well.

Apparently its a growing market. Back when I made my first post, I could only find some off-brand device on a survival supply site. Now Coleman “is selling them”:http://www.coleman.com/coleman/colemancom/detail.asp?product_id=841.582&categoryid=66100.