by Phoenix, HSM team writer

Celebrating, the Lockwood way!

Lockwood brings more than bling with two new giftable item additions to their ever-growing lineup in the gift machine, and they should not be overlooked. These two items will have people turning heads and seeing the tongue-in-cheek humor of Lockwood’s developers. They have a way of bringing the old up to date and changing the standards. If Lockwood were a real-world entity as far as consumer goods instead of Home content goods, they would cater to the over the top opulence of the nouveau-riche with this latest entry. They would dress everyone from rappers to high-society dames and gents with their Drop Science and Figment lines of clothing alone.

High-end items already fill the pages of the Gift Machine: things like the exclusive fashions and home furnishings, and jewelry you can’t find or purchase for yourself. There are also the exclusive personal spaces: the Dream Yachts, the Dream Hideaway Apartment. Now there’s The Bubbly Tower, a tower made of champagne glasses and over flowing with the highest-end beverage imagined: champagne. For those nights when you’re celebrating in the club or in your personal space with a few close friends. Who hasn’t once seen that scene in a movie where the champagne is flowing and the glasses are stacked high, and maybe had the thought, “I want to do that!” That kind of extravagance is just what some here in Home want for the coming holiday celebrations. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years are just around the corner, not mention Home weddings. If you think about it, this is the perfect gift for someone on your list: a tower of glasses with champagne flowing from them.

The second item recently introduced by Lockwood takes me back to an old saying. If someone was overly wealthy — say, like a robber-baron of the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Hearst or Morgan level — they were said to be “swimming in money.”

Can you imagine that? If you can swim in the money, take it as a definite sign of excess. Like Scrooge McDuck and many of the robber-barons of the 19^th century when it was said they were “swimming in the money,” you have to have a lot of money for that – way too much money. In that period of history they did have a lot of money; the champagne flowed like water in a era of celebration of wealth and power — and who knows, someone may have swum in money.

Disney took that thought to a visual level when they had Scrooge McDuck do just that in his money vault. He would dive in and swim laps in the depths of his gold coins. If you ever laughed and thought you would love to do that, well…now you can. Just put that on your wish list because Lockwood has that for you. But instead of swimming, you can sit in a hot tub of glinting gold coins, in their Gold Jacuzzi. Now before you say it’s over the top—yes it is, but it’s got a place in Home. There is a market here in Home for such extravagantly over the top, opulent indulgent items. Although I couldn’t believe it when I saw this one myself. I just sat there staring at it, a Jacuzzi filled with gold coins. I was thinking, “No way, Lockwood, not this, this is too much.” But is it?

Is a gold coin filled jacuzzi tub too much even for Home? No, I don’t think it is. It may not be something I would have, but it is something someone in Home “will” have as soon as it hits the market. There will be gold a’bubblin’ in some mansions. Just like the Diamond, Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire suits, the bling jewelry and all the other over the top items found in Home, this Lockwood gift item has a place. That place is to fill a void that in the real world is impossible to fill. How many in the real world could ever amass the kind of fortune it would take to have this tub? How many in the real world would ever admit to wanting this item. The looks from society when people heard someone got into a tub of gold coins would no doubt drive a person to shame in this time of uncertain economy and unstable government dealings. But it is a fact that some people long to be rich and have disposable wealth. Some people want that life of bling, bling, swag!

Here in Home it’s nothing to have all that. In the real world, less than one percent of Americans have that kind of wealth; it is estimated that 58.5 % of Americans will spend at least one year below the poverty level at some point in their life between the ages of 25-75. In 2012 the US Census Bureau stated more than 16% of Americans lived in poverty, and 20% of this was children; that is more than the 14.3% (43.6 million of 2009). With these facts, is it any wonder that Home has a place for so many gold items? It’s escapism.

You can live out any and all harmless fantasy in Home. For some people Home is about being who you can’t be anywhere else and having what you can’t have anywhere else. Wealth, it seems, is a fantasy that sells well; whether it’s in GTA or Monopoly, the idea of wealth sells. So while I wouldn’t really want to be submersed in a tub of “hot” gold coins in the real world — just thinking about that heat and possible things it could do to one’s body is disturbing — for someone special that always wanted to have the Midas touch, or just be like Scrooge McDuck, you can now make their dreams come true in Home.

Call me crazy, but I bet some of you are at the end of this article and thinking, “Yes, this is too much.”

I don’t know. Maybe. But it’d be cool. And that’s the appeal.

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2 Responses to “High-End Gifting”

1. Gary160974 says:

   November 16, 2013 at 4:56 pm

   Reminds me of a family guy episode where peter dives into a pile of money and breaks most of his bones lol

   Reply
   • Phoenix says:

     November 17, 2013 at 4:02 pm

     LOl I love that mental image just now. Ouch!

     Reply