The Tactical 1xAAA Flashlight!

Alright, this is kind of ridiculous - http://www.countycomm.com/aaatactical.html

How is this a "tactical" light exactly? It can't even function as a striker because there's no end point.

According to Dan Rutter who has some great light reviews from the pre-Luxeon and up to Luxeon 3 era.

http://www.dansdata.com

"Tactical" means "black"

The word TACTICAL ! gets abused hard ...

LED tactical flashlight is designed to use in harsh environmental conditions in order to meet different application requirements. Equipped with a variety of performance, such as high and low temperature performance, sealing, corrosion resistance, durability, illumination, color temperature, etc.

It actually looks pretty cool to me. Cool

Good looking to me! If i may i dislike a bit the wide ring near the tailcap.

I agree that the word tactical is abused hard.

The light is however more "tactical" than:

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/tactical-skull-style-velcro-49362

or

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/tactical-velcro-baseball-cap-hat-black-49215

That's pretty much spot-on.

I suppose it's not all that different from marketing ploys like "Apple-esque" (ie. all-white, because you know Apple invented the color white) or naming something iSomethingOrAnother. You automatically appeal to a certain subset of the population and by doing that you essentially replace "need" with "want", which of course is what marketing is all about: creating artificial demand by selling stuff to people they didn't know they wanted and, more likely than not, never needed in the first place.

That's also one of the reasons why multi-tier pricing works so well and often better than more sophisticated pricing methods. First, you go after the market that actually "needs", and not just "wants" your product. These aren't necessarily people who can't afford to pay more - they're price-sensitive in the sense that they don't want to and probably won't pay more.

And then you have your mid-tier product and that's where buzzwords like tactical/mil-spec/heavy duty/combat-proven/$cool_sounding_acronym_most_people_think_they_know_but_actually_do_not come in. Historically, the Chinese have a tendency to do things differently and I suppose that is one of the reasons why you see $3 lights with "POLICE" stamped on the side. They're going for "cool" but the somewhat understated, low-key cool-by-association approach that, for instance, H&K use (ie. "buy our product and you'll instantly become a special forces operator") to make their products more desirable only works when your merchandise can back up your marketing claims, at least to some extent: H&K really does make some great products. And some are actually in use by SOF units. What does that mean for you? Well, nothing, really. I'm sure some Rangers swear by Charmin but I'm still not throwing out all my toilet paper and buying stock in P&G. ;)

The point is: this specific type of marketing only works for some products and when you have a flashlight with "POLICE" on the side in big, bright letters and you're not a law enforcement officer, it doesn't make you look cool unless you're a 12-year-old kid. And when that flashlight happens to be a $4 knock-off that actually feels like a $4 knock-off, it just makes things worse. It's sort of like that with all the tactical gear. It may look cool but no matter how many tactical pens and what not you carry, chances are you won't be mistaken for Jack Bauer when you're signing your credit card receipt at Walmart. ;)

Heck, every couple of years some guy kills an approaching bear with a three inch blade but that's not because he had a super-special tactical knife. It's usually because he was determined to protect his family and was willing to die in the process and on top of that, he probably got lucky. Plus surviving != walking away unharmed.

Oxy, that was a fantastic post...and pretty much sums up my sentiments exactly. It's gotten to the point where I dismiss anything with "tactical" written on it without a second thought. It seems the word "tactical" is being used to replace all other adjectives such as weatherproof, ruggedized, shock-proof, etc...

And then there's just silly:

That light looks like the Mr Lite J2 AA for HIM.

It's a cute little thing, it looks like a scale model of a bigger light :)

You're right, it IS the J2, just downsized for an AAA battery! Why did Countycomm stop using ITP/Olight as their OEM?

anyone see reviews for this light?

There are a few on youtube, but not very favorable. The first impressions on cpf I read were also not that good.