Saturday, June 11, 2005

Why not Yilida?

The age of exploration is not yet through. The 19 Minutes staff was just tasked with changing the battery in a "meteor storm", a terrifically pointless and yet thrilling LED-style toy that so mesmerizes my daughter that it earned the term "distract-o-matic" for its usefulness on a flight from Austin to Phoenix some months ago.

Anyway, until moments ago, it still had the factory installed batteries inside, which, upon their removal, yielded the following useful piece of information:

Made in Yilida
To save you the trouble, the 19 Minutes Crack Research Department (motto: "Small but inquisitive") immediately Googled Yilida, and discovered that the Zhejiang Yilida Ventilator Company, Ltd. is, in fact, "one of the largest manufacturers of air conditioning ventilators in China today". It also has a very catchy theme song, which one can hear on their website.

There's also a Yilida Dried Flowers Company, Ltd. on whose website we learn that "Spring is now peeping into the window of my room."

And, of course, there's HeBei YiLiDa Metal Wire Mesh Company, Ltd., which is located in AnPing County, "which has the reputation of 'Town of the Wire Nettings'," a distinction it recently captured from Mason City, Iowa, which is now been relegated to the reputation of "Northern Iowa Town of the Wire Nettings".

[A subsequent Googling of AnPing County does reveal a staggering number of wire mesh companies, even more than Cerro Gordo County, Iowa.]

Most relevantly, there also exists a Yilida Electronics Company, which tragically, does not purport to make AA batteries, but does boast that "Based on the policy of 'Quality First, Customer Utmost, No unqualified products', we are repetitiously titled as the Contract Honored and Credible Enterprise, being popular among all walls of life."

Unfortunately, their business profile notes the company's annual sales range is "Blow US$1 Million".

I, personally, could blow a million bucks and not find a map listing "Yilida", because what it is not, is a country. Or a city. Or a province. Or a perfecture.

But those meteor storms are cool toys, no matter what your wall of life.

11 comments:

Mitch Teich said...

Glad it met with a good reception. It gives me hope that my application to be Ambassador to Yilida might yet pay off.

Rionn Fears Malechem said...

Slightly different experience -- I just found a battery marked 'made in Yilida' on my floor. As I don't have 'meteor storm', I'm still trying to trace the source.

Anonymous said...

You saved me a bit of time. My 4 year olds toy (I now know it's called a "meteor storm") stopped working, so when I opened it up and took out the batteries, they said: "Made in Yilida!" I exclaimed, "where in the heck is THAT".

We searched the globe, and no luck, so I Googled, and found my answer. I have also found inner peace, as a result.

The Athens Project said...

Having learned the NAME of my toy loaded with batteries from the global superpower motherland of Yilida, I Googled "'meteor storm' toy" and found a toy store selling it that identified it as a product of Schylling Toys.

Schylling has contact info so I wrote an emaiil with the results we all longed for.

From the web page Ms. Goodwin sent me, I googled "Tanjiang Highway 325"
It led me to pages referring to this road near a city named Kaiping, which is part of Yilida's full company name. Fairly safe to assume then that Yalida is somewhere near Kaiping in Guangdong province about midway between Guangzhou and YangJiang along National Highway 325, the gray line connecting those two cities. (http://www.maps-of-china.com/guangdong-s-ow.shtml)



From: William Jacobs [mailto:williamjacobs@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 10:17 AM
To: info@schylling.com
Subject: "Meteor Storm" batteries


Dear Schylling Toys,

I hope you can help clear up a mystery for us.
A Schylling Toys "Meteor Storm" LED toy of ours ran out of battery power and the original "Wanshifa" batteries shipped with the toys are labeled "Made in Yilida"
Can you possibly tell me where Yalida is. There is growing interest in the too-much-time-on-our-hands community



Bill Jacobs
www.athensproject.com

On 8/22/06, Jennifer Goodwin jennifer@schylling.com wrote:

Thank you for your inquiry - the batteries should be labeled Made at Yilida; that is the name of the manufacturer, as can be found at http://www.yilida-battery.com/english/gongsi.htm . I hope this closes the case for you, and I hope you enjoy the English translations on their website as much as I have.

Thank you again for choosing Schylling,

Jennifer Goodwin, Customer Service
Schylling Associates
jennifer@schylling.com
Toll-Free: 800-541-2929
TEL: 978-948-3601 FAX: 978-948-0860
www.schylling.com www.tintoys.com

Ida Wilson, PhD said...

Hi

I'm from South Africa and found my made in Yilida batteries in a small fm radio bought at a stall at a flea market. Thanks for the Blog....no I can sleep again

Anonymous said...

Our 'meteor storm' toy died long ago and the dead batteries were just ratteling around. Has anyone noticed the little green tree on the battery? Enviromentaly safe? And whats with the WANSHIFA. Its time to GOOGLE...

Anonymous said...

man, i just got Yilida batteries too!
what the heck!

Anonymous said...

Interesting. I also got those triple-A Wanshifa batteries "Made in Yilida" in my child's toy. We are in Madrid, Spain. So now we know where that "country" is.

Anonymous said...

Insightful research.... We just discovered "Made in Yilida" batteries in our Poppin' Fresh Doughboy electronic timer. As he was sounding a bit sickly we figured the batteries were at the end of their lifespan. Thank you again for keeping us from entering a google-induced Twilight Zone.

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Anonymous said...

I thought products had to be labeled with the country of origin (manufacture) not the ctiy/town/provence etc