POTV INVESTIGATES
In a world-first, Planet Of The Vapes has gone undercover to conduct an investigation into ‘fancy-sounding fruity flavours’ and produced findings that will shock the United Kingdom (and the world) to its core
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by Dave Cross
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Shops sell vapes, we all know this, but what would you say if I told you they also sell other things? Pretty amazed, huh?
What we did
Pretending to be a fifteen-year-old girl from Barking was no easy feat. Dedicating myself to the role, I spent months wearing unsuitable clothes, whining at my mother for not making the right meal for supper and listening to dangerous levels of Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran.
Then, and here’s the clever part, I used a new invention called ‘The Internet’ to visit stores undercover to see what products they had available and how easy the buying process was.
They actually deliver to your front door
With names designed to appeal to teens like Tesco, Morrisons, and Ken’s Fruit and Veg, these stores exist on the High Street and in the digital realm. Anyone with the knowledge and access to ‘The Internet’ can find their special online pages where they carry out zero age checks and allow teens to buy from a cornucopia of products.
What are they selling?
I found multiple examples of fancy-sounding fruity flavours, including:
- Apple (multiple varieties)
- Banana
- Grape (black AND green)
- And even the overtly sexual Kumquat
- [Other things I can't be bothered to list here]
Flavours and Colours
Research I just made up has shown that only people under the age of 18 are remotely attracted to colourful and good tasting things – and the younger you are, the more you want to put it in your mouth.
So-called fruits and vegetables have been designed in a multitude of child-friendly colours and flavours. Reds, oranges, yellows, grubby browns, mouldy greens. Just one click and they would be placed in a virtual basket.
Then, providing you can find availability in the delivery section, I managed to get a delivery scheduled for three weeks on Wednesday.
What do these so-called retailers say?
I phoned up the Chairmen of all of these stores to discuss this. Unsurprisingly, none of them would take my calls – obviously doing their bit to maintain the cover-up. In fact, two of them contacted the police and made-up stories of harassment and now I have an exclusion order in place that prevents me from going within 10 feet of any phone. It’s a conspiracy.
Expert opinion
I didn’t approach any actual experts because I didn’t want them to say something that might contradict something I was planning on writing – that, and I don’t know any actual experts – but if I had they would probably have said something like this…
Professor [Redacted]: “Clearly these shocking findings are shocking. How are children to know that potatoes and tomatoes contain nicotine? The government has dropped the ball on this one by not ensuring that only adults can purchase fruit and vegetables. If they don’t act now we may as well all pack up and go home because they are just proving Ivan Turgenev was correct and there’s no point to anything.”
A research team from somewhere that doesn’t exist produced a list of all know adult-only flavours and colours:
- Car tyre black
- Dog faeces brown
- Sunday evening blues
- Political debate grey
- Medicine flavour
- An English mother’s bland cooking flavour
- The taste of a window flavour
Our opinion
Adults are known for their aversion to anything colourful or tasty – it’s why they wear drab clothing and eat offal. Fruit and vegetables present a clear and present danger to the UK’s teens and their online availability is a disgrace in a 21st century first world nation. Planet of the Vapes calls for an immediate ban to the sale of fruit, veg, sweets, ice cream, pies, fizzy pop and anything else that may bring a little bit of joy into people’s lives.
Photo Credit:
Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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