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The granddaddy of cool gadget manufacturers must arguably be the Wenger Company. Don’t know who they are? Ok three words… Swiss Army Knife. They are the current manufacturers of this world famous gadget that has become as much a status symbol as a useful gadget. I say current manufacturer, as originally the Swiss army knife was made by a company named Victorinox, but after some commercial manoeuvring, manufacturing was taken over by the Wenger Corporation in the early 90s. Oddly enough, Victorinox purchased the Wenger Corporation in 2005; it is a strange world we live in.

With a long history of excellent pocket knife design behind them, I was surprised to find a really rather ludicrous product in their line-up. Namely the exceptionally well named “Giant”. This crazy knife has a staggering 85 separate tools built into it and weighs in at a ridiculous 2lb. certainly not something you would want to carry around in your pocket!

Some of the more extreme additions to the veritable garage full of tools and devices which hide away into this Swiss army knife are:

• Golf club face cleaner – Why include this? What use is it when all you need is a pocket knife with a normal blade to do the same job?

• Golf shoe spike wrench – For those golfers who actually notice they have a loose spike and decide to make instant repairs on the fairway.

• Watch case back opening tool – Useful for those life and death threatening moments when you feel you need to take the back from your watch and start fiddling with the gears.

• Telescopic pointer – When a finger just won’t do!

• Shortix laboratory key – I don’t even know where the Shortix laboratory is, so why do I need a key for it? They should change the locks.

• Toothpick – Not a bad idea, but on a 2lb knife the size of a house brick, one wonders who would have the strength and dexterity to manoeuvre this small piece of metal into their mouth and extract the popcorn stuck between their molars.

I must admit I thought it was a joke when I first found details of the “Giant”, but no, it is a true production model of the Swiss army knife, ok it was created as a special anniversary model but even so, it is on sale to the general public.

Current owners of the Giant are somewhat taken aback that the model was produced too early to include the newly patented Wenger finger clipping tool, so we can expect a new model some time possibly named “Super Giant” or some other amazingly inventive name.

All joking aside, the manufacturers of the Swiss army brand have consistently created high quality and useful products for decades, it is quite a shame to see them making something of a laughing stock of themselves by falling so deeply into the “bigger is better” line of thinking.