Breathe Wrong

Generally I'm a believer in generic products. Everything is made in pretty much the same place, especially for commodities like spices and salad dressings and drugs and such. So when my friends bought me generic brand breathe-right strips for our hiking trip a couple of weeks ago I didn't think much of it.

It turns out that the Breathe-Right people really might have some defensible IP.

The generic brand pretty much fails on every count. It is really difficult to get the generics out of their packaging. The adhesive they use pretty much won't stick to anything but freshly cleaned skin. The shape is ambiguous, and I probably wear it backwards just as frequently as I wear it forwards. It just isn't a particularly friendly product.

Which makes it even stranger that it works just as well. Yup, despite all if its shortcomings the generic brand ends up doing exactly the same thing. Which renders much of this story pointless. Sorry.