Unleashing a torrent of words like the Old Testament Yahweh sending down the rain required to float the famous Ark, Drew Allan Kaplan was as prolific a wordsmith as they come. He also possessed a rare genius for uncovering, and then putting up for sale, only the choicest detritus of the Pacific Rim manufacturing juggernaut. If there was some purportedly space-age, poorly-engineered, “bells and whistles” junk to be found out there, his adoring public slept easily at night knowing Drew would soon have some full color pictures and hyperbolic written descriptions of it before long. Sent, through the U.S. Mail, directly to their home.

His products were real marvels for an incipient computer age. DAK readers could buy 700 slider graphic equalizers that sliced and diced music into hair-thin strands of sound, ultra-low frequency sub-woofers the size of a kitchen table, telephone spying devices that allowed users to snoop on just not their daughter’s conversations but their next door neighbor’s daughter as well, flimsy Olivetti daisy wheel printers that had been assembled by workers not good enough to make the cut at the notoriously shoddy factory at FIAT, home doorbell boosters that allowed musically-minded families to choose their doorbell ring from over 15,000 public-domain songs, or desktop pollution zappers that claimed to be able to gather and convert dust mites into glittering nuggets of pyrite. And that was just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

It went on for page after page after page and while it was a great read, most people had the wisdom to enjoy it for what it was and keep their checkbooks safely in the top desk drawer. However, there were also of plenty gullible misfits, impulsive pinheads and pound-foolish rubes who couldn’t control themselves and smashed their piggy banks to smithereens every time a new catalog thumped onto their welcome mat. These benighted souls are still out there today, desperately clicking away on banner ads proclaiming “85 YEAR OLD YOGA INSTRUCTOR’S ANTI-AGING SECRETS” and “HOT MILFS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD NEED SEX TONIGHT” whenever and wherever they pop up.