Groen Brothers
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2018–2021
2:48 · 639K views · Apr 8, 2007
A Dutch parody commercial from the Groen Brothers for a supposed Star Wars style mosquito defense system. It mimics the style of infomercials with laser-armed anti-mosquito technology.
Brought up as a joke or tongue-in-cheek prior art whenever someone proposes shooting insects or pests with lasers.
3 comments from Hacker News
This is completely off topic but the headline made me immediately think of this: this video Since most here are not Dutch it requires a bit of explanation , this was a parody video made in the early 2000’s of the countless “QVC” style info/commercials that used to be aired during the day or late at night on dutch television to fill airtime. They would take some b-grade TV products from US (and possibly other countries) and just poorly dub it over for the Dutch market, often by the same guy. These “Tellsell” (which I believe was the actual name of the company) commercials everyone would know about and sometimes joke about the crappy products and commercial style. This parody has all the typical cliches of these commercials like every time the name of the product was mentioned it would be extra sloooow and disadvantages of “alternative” products exaggerated to comical extremes. I believe this video came out before YouTube was mainstream, and circulated on USB drives and shared on LAN parties. Ahh the old times (when not every piece of content ever made was instantly available).
Ah yes, the "star wars laser defense mosquito system". It' as impractical then (early 00's origin) as it is now this video (it's Dutch but you get it). Unless you can get mm accuracy and perfect non-foe detection it's useless with the multi-watt lasers generally required.
Maybe this could be considered prior art: a satirical Dutch commercial from 2007 (or earlier) about the "Star Wars Mosquito Defence System" this video