If one makes a knife and names it for a fictional inhabitant of a well-developed fantasy universe, one must expect a diverse comment or three, based on the traditions and prejudices of that world.
What do I sell Hobbits? They tend to buy small fixed blade knives in the tradition of the northwest corner of Eurasia, which roughly overlays their corner of Middle Earth. Puukkos and such. Of course, they pay in the coin of the Shire, and my mundane bank doesn't know what to do with it.
If this thread is anything close to a representative sample of hard-core knife people, it looks like customers for the Pocket Hobbit are real world humans who pay in dollars or other convertable currency.
The Hobbits I've talked to (fictional beings in fictional conversation, of course) have also had problems with such relatively conventional knives as a Benchmade 812SBT, at least until I explain that the black coating is for corrosion resistance if one ventures past the Tower Hills toward the sea, and the serrations are useful if you have a long rope and need a short one. High-tech folders, are, in any case, a bit of a mystery to most Hobbits, whose tastes are rather conservative.
Are the prejudices of Middle Earth logical? Maybe no more than the prejudices of the real world. In the modern real world, both good guys and bad guys use the same weapons. To my mind, perhaps because martial arts are not my department, the REKAT Pioneer looks much more intersting than the Pocket Hobbit. Likewise the Carnivore, which looks carnivorous, but I think I could do work with it.
But Middle Earth cutlery prejudices are nothing like what I run into in the real world, where something like a plain edge Delica gets an "Ugh! Scary knife!" reaction from a fair number of people I know. I, in turn, don't really understand why I am repelled by a Pocket Hobbit, but the Spyderco Civilian has an odd appeal to me, and a classic Japanese sword is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, though all three were expressly designed for use as deadly force, as was that elegant leaf-shaped dagger of Elvish making, that glowed blue when Orcs were nearby.
I guess if we all had the same tastes, there would be a lot fewer knives to choose from.
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- JKM
Chai Cutlery
[This message has been edited by James Mattis (edited 20 March 1999).]
