Mira-Cool -- Repackaged Cool Surge?

Just in time for our first warm day in a while, today's Star Tribune had an ad from the Universal Media Syndicate for something called Mira-Cool.

As it's described in the ad, it sounds indistinguishable from the Cool Surges they were marketing last year, which I wrote about here.


Even better, Consumer Reports did a test in 2009 that concluded, "Because of its negligible cooling in our tests, we've given the Cool Surge portable air cooler our Don't Buy: Performance Problem judgment."

What was the test CR put it to? Here are the details:

We controlled conditions around [a 200-square-foot] room to simulate an 85°F dry summer day with a relative humidity of just 57 percent.

...Our string of sensors showed the device failed to appreciably lower the room's overall temperature during a four-hour test.

We also tested the Cool Surge at an even drier, desertlike setting of 25 percent relative humidity, again, at 85°F. Even in these conditions, which are suitable for an evaporative cooler, we measured a mere 2 degrees of cooling during the four-hour test.

Of course, I don't know that the Mira-Cool is the same exact machine inside as Cool Surge. Here are the similarities, based on the generalities available in the two ads.

• Cool Surge "uses about 96% less electricity than air conditioners." Mira-Cool "uses 95% less electricity."
• Both promote the idea of "ice cooled air" (no hyphen), courtesy of two reusable ice blocks that are included. (Just like the kind you'd put in a picnic cooler... you have to keep refreezing them in your freezer every four hours, a detail not provided in the ad).
  
• Both ads have quotes from an Operations Director named Chris Gallo or Christopher Gallow. Huh. What's up with the spelling change?
• It's even the same price -- $298 plus shipping, and you get a second one for free (except the shipping, which I understand from Consumer Reports and other sources runs about $50 per unit).

From looking at the two ads, it's clear that at least the outer shells of the two coolers are different, although they appear to be the same dimensions. It will take another review by Consumer Reports to find out if the Mira-Cool performs any better than Cool Surge.

Amusingly, the four photos across the bottom of the two ads are identical... except they're not the same photos. Instead, the photos have been reshot with the same content:

• An older woman with her cooler, holding up some type of certificate or bill or something. It's even the same document, with a big red triangle in the upper right corner...just not the same woman. (They've given her a dog in the Mira-Cool ad. Nice touch, there.)
• A young girl rolling the cooler from left to right through a doorway.
  
• A family with mom, dad, two boys, and one girl playing a board game.
• A woman sleeping in a darkened room while the cooler looms over her.
  

Repackaging the ad, repackaging the product... I wonder why? Didn't they build up any brand equity in the Cool Surge name last year?

One difference between the two ads: I didn't notice any claims about Mira-Cool being "eco-friendly," unlike last year's Cool Surge ad.
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Here's a list of my past posts about the Universal Media Syndicate, its many products, and its parent company, Arthur Middleton Capital Holdings.