A bunch of sites posted about the Zvue Spirit last Monday.
The spirit is an unapologetically patriotic MP3 player "dedicated to the land of the free and inspired by this great nation" wrapped in the American flag, with a star for navigation, and preloaded with songs like "God Bless the USA" "America is my home" and "back in the USA".
After reading about it I thought to myself "wow, what a great American company Zvue is to create a patriotic product like this. I wonder where in the US they produce these?"
So I emailed their investor/press relations guy to ask "Is it made in the US?".........
Yep, like the rest of the cheap crap at Wal-Mart the patriotic player is likely a re-branded Asian OEM player of unknown quality.
I know a lot of people who consider themselves Patriots, many of then have served in the military and fought to defend this nation, they try to support American businesses and buy American made products. Many of them would see a product like this and buy it assuming it was made in the USA.
If you had made them here and proudly put "Made in the USA" on the packaging you would have had a lot of satisfied patriotic customers even if it meant a higher price point. But was it even possibly for Zvue to have built it in the US? What electronics are still made in the US?
Has American manufacturing fallen so far that we are incapable of making something as simple as a 1GB flash based MP3 player domestically?
What do you think? is it ok to hype a "patriotic" product that is made overseas? can a product like this actually be made in America in 2008?
Thanks for calling ZVUE out on this. I've had a terrible time finding any consumer electronics that are made in the United States. The only ones I've found are listed at: http://whybuymadeinusa.com/category/electronics