Cabinet of Curiosities - Day 16

Today's item of note is a stolen cruet.

However, there's an interesting story attached to them.

As you might see from the accompanying napkin, these came from Virgin Atlantic airlines. In fact, they came from their Upper Class section where high-paying passengers are treated very well indeed. The food and drink is excellent, the seats are wonderfully comfortable and no expense is spared - including the salt and pepper pots which were made from metal and resembled cute chunky airplanes with feet. Named Wilbur and Orville, after the Wright Brothers, they were so cute, in fact, that they often got slipped into a traveller's pocket and would frequently turn up on Ebay and other auction sites.

Now, Virgin Atlantic could have made a fuss about this. Or they could have stopped giving out the cruets. But then one smart marketing exec pointed out that these little salt and pepper pots were great ambassadors for the airline. Everyone who swiped a cruet told all of their friends about how great the airline was. So rather than do away with them, they started making them in cheaper chrome-covered plastic and, just for fun, all of these new salt and pepper pots had the cheeky words 'Pinched from Virgin Atlantic' written on their feet.

And then, to make them even more collectible (or tempting), they produced them in colour variant editions such as gold or black or red.

What a brilliantly simple idea - turning an expensive problem into an opportunity to generate good feelings about the company and free advertising. 

And the cleverest thing of all is that the cost of these things is built into the price of the flight so people are actually stealing their own property - just like all the extras people nab from hotels.

Genius.

So where did I get mine?

Erm ...