“It cuts like a bat out of hell”

I love swords.  I’ve been a sword geek my whole life, and I collect replica swords and enjoy studying how they were used and by whom.  So of course, I’m familiar with Cold Steel.  They’re a company that makes knives, swords, and other weapons, and by most accounts their stuff is of good quality, if a bit pricey.  I’ve been tempted several times to buy a few of their knives, and I always enjoy looking through their online catalog to see what crazy weapon they’re making now.

In the interweb community, however, Cold Steel’s biggest claim to fame is perhaps their test cutting videos.  They do one for almost every one of their knives and swords, and they show various employees of the company cutting, stabbing and slicing various objects to show the effectiveness of their products.

These videos are, even by product promotion standards, completely over the top.  My favorite of the lot, though, is the one below, for the Chinese War Sword.

It starts off in standard Cold Steel style, with a still picture of the product and a dramatic voice over explaining just how awesome it is.  Note the dude says this sword will “shear through armor as if it were butter, not to mention mere flesh and bone.”  Ok, no it won’t.  Not unless by “armor” you mean “motorcycle jacket”.  It could probably severely wound a man in chain armor, especially if you caught him completely unawares, but it wouldn’t do more than dent plate armor, of that I am certain.  NO sword ever went through armor as if it were butter (no, not even the katana).  Nobody would have worn the stuff if it were that ineffective.  Also, remember that “mere flesh and bone” bit for later.

The video then goes into some rather standard cutting demonstrations.  Bamboo poles, rolled up tatami mats, ropes.  I just love how Lynn Thompson (President of Cold Steel) seems to insist on doing these test cutting videos in a shirt and tie.  It’s surreal.  I imagine him sitting in his corner office doing some paperwork, maybe having a meeting with some supplier or distributor, when he gets buzzed by his secretary.  “Mr Thompson, you’re wanted downstairs.  They’re ready to shoot the Chinese War Sword promotional video.”  So he winds down the meeting, excuses himself, and goes downstairs to hack apart sides of beef in his business wear.

Oh, did I not mention the sides of beef?  Well, if you’ve already watched it, you know the video continues to up the ante, moving on from the more standard test cutting fare to more, shall we say, interesting things.  At about the 2:20 mark, the famous Cold Steel “boot full of meat” makes its appearance.  I love that one.  I wonder whose job it is to stuff the boot full of meat scraps before every video?  I bet they make the rookies do that as a hazing ritual.

At 2:38 they chop apart some kind of freaking skull on a pole.  What is that, a cow skull?  I’m not even sure.  Anyway, remember how the dude earlier in the video made a crack about “mere flesh and bone”?  Note how it does NOT go through that skull.  It makes a nice cut, but it does not “shear through it like butter”.  If it can’t go through flesh and bone (despite what they insinuated earlier), what makes them think it’s going to go through steel?  After the skull, Lynn quickly takes apart a plywood pirate, and then it quickly goes back to what everybody wants to see.  BEEF.  Lynn demolishes a rack of ribs in three powerful chops.  Man, now I’m hungry.  Nothing sells me on a sword more than a beefy man chopping through beef!

At 3:08 we get perhaps the most bizarre bit of test cutting ever.  A vicious basketball is chopped cleanly in half by the impressive Chinese War Sword!  Yeah, a basketball.  Seriously, watch it for yourself, I wouldn’t dream of making this shit up.  I haven’t any idea what this was supposed to prove, but there you go.  If you ever wanted to know what the inside of a basketball looks like, here’s your chance.  After the basketball, there’s some more bamboo, and then another of Cold Steel’s old standbys–at 3:32 they chop through the “trash bag full of meat wearing a denim jacket.”  This one is especially dumb, since even in slow motion it’s not clear the sword did much more than just chop through a denim jacket and a trash bag  and push aside some meat scraps.  All the meat just kind of falls out onto the floor, and it’s rather unimpressive.

There’s a lot more stuff (plastic trash cans full of Gatorade, soda cans, soda bottles, all demolished to a pulse pounding metal beat!) until finally, at around 5:00, we get the pièce de résistance:

Have you watched it yet?  You’re not just reading this in lieu of watching it, are you?  Because seriously, you need to watch the video.  I do my best to entertain, but I know my limits, and I know that just describing the final bit of the video isn’t going to do it justice.  I mean, I’m going to do it anyway.  But I want to make sure you’ve seen it for yourself first.  Because really.  You need to.

Ok, finally, the pièce de résistance.  Two pig carcasses, hung side by side, are methodically chopped in half, then chopped in half again, then beheaded.  I’m sure this is probably illegal in some states.  It also seems like rather a waste of good pork, but I suppose they could have picked the meat up off the floor and hosed it off afterwords.  I was actually sort of impressed with this bit until I realized the carcasses have been gutted and cleaned already.  Still, a clean cut through both pigs with one blow!  Man, if this thing didn’t cost the world, I’d buy one right now!  It’s good to know that I could kill a charging wild pig with one blow, all while wearing a shirt and tie!