FIFA Not Best Pleased With Protektorvest

January 18th, 2010 | by: chris | View Comments

You knew they’d incur FIFA’s wrath eventually, and boy have they. (If you’d missed it, read up on the stab-safe Protektorvest here.)

Of course, maybe we didn’t know. How has this thing caught such fire that it’s trickling all the way to FIFA, when it’s so…gimmicky. It’s really the type of thing which you chuckle at, wonder ever so slightly for a second if “maybe…” and then quickly dismiss the notion and spend the cash on a decent replica kit instead. Or counseling, in the event that your team didn’t make it.

But somehow, it has hit the mainstream, and those running the show aren’t quite thrilled about its place on the personal safety market:

Local World Cup organising committee spokesman Rich Mkhondo condemned the vests as an “abominable money making ploy using fear tactics”.

Mkhondo said in a statement: “Sport fans visiting South Africa have never needed stab vests. They will not and will never need them during the World Cup…The marketing of stab vests is a joke.”

Likely true. Of course the product itself it so outlandish and curiosity-inducing, Rich just hit the payroll as Protektorvest’s best advertiser. So perhaps in the future, silence is the best plan of attack.

And at the end of this little news feed, the one proclaiming the safety of visitors at the World Cup, there was a small blip on another South Africa 2010 news story:

Police were on Monday hunting two men who made threats on a local television programme to kill and rob fans at the World Cup.

Probably not the optimal choice for a footnote.