In February 1964, when the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show, record executives in America were faced with the question of how to get a piece of the Beatlemania action. The result was an explosion of knockoff Beatles records, promising things like “The Beetle Beat”, “Beat-A-Mania” and “The Original Liverpool Sound”, credited (often in type far smaller than the famous song titles) to bands with names like The Bearcuts, The Manchesters, The Moptops and the Liverpool Kids, and featuring cover models with varyingly plausible approximations of the Beatles' haircuts, as detailed by WFMU's Gaylord Fields (SLVimeo).
posted by acb on Nov 22, 2012 - 34 comments

Cheats may or may not prosper, but they despise themselves for cheating. At least according to an intriguing piece of research published in Psychological Science by Francesca Gino of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Research suggests wearing fake goods makes you feel a fake yourself, and causes you to be more dishonest in other matters than you would otherwise be.
posted by Fizz on Jun 25, 2010 - 65 comments

Give us your secrets. The Chinese government plans order foreign manufacturers to reveal information about their digital products, a Japanese newspaper reported on Friday. It will introduce rules requiring foreign firms to disclose secret information about digital household appliances and other products from May next year, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, citing unnamed sources. If a company refuses to disclose information, China would ban it from exporting the product to the Chinese market or producing or selling it in China, the paper said. [more inside]
posted by caddis on Sep 22, 2008 - 38 comments

The Knockoff Project. Album cover homages and rip-offs.
posted by jimmy on Oct 10, 2003 - 12 comments

Daema kicks some serious ape butt The sequels to Pierre Boulle's original Planet of the Apes novel are, apparently, leaving something to be desired. Lets invent some and raise the tone, shall we? Planet of the Jeeps: An astronaut lands on a planet and gets rammed in his Nissan Micra at an intersection by a Simian driving a Sport Utility Vehicle. Director Tim Burton gets slated by the critics - "Good Science Fiction should show us things we've never seen before".
posted by RichLyon on Aug 26, 2001 - 19 comments