A win-lose situation

NURY VITTACHI lists seven things which are too successful for their own good

Boys and girls, remember that it is extremely stupid and dangerous to pour explosive fuel on to the flames of a backyard bonfire or barbecue. Let DADDY do it.

I know a father-of-three who did this and created a fireball of Hollywood proportions that instantly vaporised the bonfire and a nearby tree. The children loved it. (The mothers less so.)

I was reminded of that anecdote by a news item which soon grew into a list of seven examples of things which are too successful for their own good.

1) A “stress-releasing” massage chair relaxed a shopper so much that he fell into a deep sleep - and missed the closing of the shop and departure of all staff. When he eventually woke up in the chair it was dark, the electronics shop in Japan was locked, and police had to be called to let him out. “It was a good advertisement for the chair,” said reader Mark Chinney, who sent me the news item.

2) It reminded me of that super-scary ghost movie Bhoot launched in India in 2003, after which a cinemagoer was found dead of a heart attack. In a rare case of good taste, filmmakers resisted the temptation to capitalise on it with a challenge: “HE didn’t make it - will YOU survive our movie?”

3) Then there was a Hong Kong emigration advisor whose business appeared to contain the seeds of its own destruction. “We’re losing all our clients,” he told me in his third year of operation. “They’re moving away.”

4) “At the end of last year, the Delhi municipal authorities announced that their anti-plastic bag campaign had been so successful they had collected 1,200 kilos of polythene bags,” said Amithaba Kumar, a reader from that city. “Then they admitted that they had nowhere to put them and were planning to throw them into a