The Perfect Show is back with our biggest episode yet about the tiniest thing we've covered so far. 

Scot chases down the Tiny Display Tents that used to be in stores, and trying to find out what happened to them takes him on a tiny adventure in this episode. If you've ever marveled at one of those miniature camping set-ups you are not alone, this episode is for you, and anyone who wants to join the fun.

Special thanks to: 

Chelsea Hinkson, Ben Reburn, and Dr. Carla Marie Manly, who you can find at https://drcarlamanly.com/

Music from this episode by:

Shawn Korkie - https://www.fiverr.com/shawnkorkie

Brrrrravo - https://www.fiverr.com/brrrrravo

Bastreon - https://www.fiverr.com/bastereon

Ben Reburn - https://www.bandlab.com/benreburn

Freeadmusic.com - http://www.freeadmusic.com/

Aandy Valentine - https://www.fiverr.com/aandyvalentine

Kgrapofficial - https://www.fiverr.com/kgrapofficial

AI-Generated Transcript:

Speaker 2: <time>0:22 </time>

Hi and welcome to the Perfect Show. I'm your host, scott Moppen. I'm what you might call a perfection prospector, sifting through life looking for little things or experiences that could be considered perfect. Join me each episode as I examine one topic that I'm presenting as one of these little nuggets of perfection. There was a time back when I was in high school, or maybe even before, when I would go out to a store for something the one I'm thinking about right now is Target, but it could have been one of any number of department stores or sporting goods stores and before leaving with whatever I came to get, I would take a short detour over to the camping section and check out the tents they had for sale. Now, I wasn't ever needing to buy a tent, I didn't even really like camping all that much, a point that was repeatedly confirmed through Boy Scouts but the draw for me was that they showed you what the full-size tents would look like all put together, by having miniaturized, fully assembled versions of them on display, which welcomed you to kind of like look all around them and inspect that model's features and details tiny stitching like tiny flaps, little tiny rain flies, tiny mesh doors with tiny zippers All the features of the Big Tent there in perfect miniature. I would walk back to visit these tents on my shopping trips, like going to check in on a friend's pet that I secretly think loves me more than them. But this perfect little row of display tents, each one slightly different tents for four people or six people, tents with extra brooms or tiny tents with tiny vents for when it gets hot. There was something intangibly pleasant about walking through this shrunken retail campsite, zipping flaps open and peering down inside. So for this episode I will be exploring the perfection of these little, tiny display tents, as well as when they vanished and where they went. For a long time it was something that I kept to myself, a private joy of mine, that I wouldn't talk with anyone else about. Because why would I? It's not like it was embarrassing, it was just something that would hardly ever just bring up in natural conversation. But when it did, I found out that I was far from alone in my fascination. One trip, with a friend I think, I started making up some reason to venture back to the tiny tents and my friend was like dude, yeah, of course those things are awesome. In fact, pretty much every time I've broached the subject with other people, I get this rush of enthusiasm spilling out back to me almost uncontrollably, like people start gushing and telling me that they love these tiny tents too, almost like they were just waiting for someone else to break the ice and get the conversation rolling. Researching for this episode, I found that my personal experience echoes that of tons of other people. Online there are Reddit threads filled with people waxing poetic and remembering how much they always loved these tiny display tents. These messages usually include some version of, and all this time I thought I was the only one. I mean, it was seriously hard to find information on the tiny display tents themselves, sometimes due to all the different comments and results that were just people gushing in random ways over the internet about how much they love these things. The last time I remember seeing these in person was probably around 2009 or 2010, just after I moved back from Japan, and I saw them in various stores here in the Bay Area, like Target or REI, which is a big outdoor store that is here that I didn't have where I grew up. I was even ready to try and haggle to own one, and I remember asking a few different store employees about that possibility, but all of them told me it's really something that they couldn't sell, and the only time they can sell them or get rid of them is when they stopped selling that model of tent, and at that point the timing on that was pretty unpredictable, and employees themselves also usually know when that happens first and get first dibs on it, which totally makes sense. So then, about a year or so after that I think, I noticed that they were gone from those two store chains and I stopped seeing them or being able to find them anywhere else. I mean, it's hard to put a pinpoint on when you stop seeing something, because it's only after a while of not seeing it that you really noticed that it hasn't been around for a while, but I feel like it was probably around the 2011-2012 time that I noticed that I just hadn't been seeing these and I wasn't seeing them anywhere, but I don't think I really questioned it. To be honest, the tiny tent seemed like the product of a past era. Now I was imagining interactive web pages where you can view, zoom or spin digital recreations of the tents, lessening the need to have physical displays anymore. Over the 10 years since then, web development has only gotten more capable and digital displays are more widely used, so it would make total sense to me if everything had gone digital. Every tiny display tent had to be made individually, and then it's really only useful for one retailer in one location. Meaning scaling up that process also directly scales up all the work for the tent makers. A digital copy, however, once it's built and deployed online, it can just be accessed by any customer or retailer anywhere in the world at the same time. So hopping onto websites for the biggest tent manufacturers, that's what I expected to find, but they seem instead to be focused on a good amount of photos and videos showing and describing the tents. I didn't really find any digital spinnable models like I had imagined at all. I did reach out to one of them, coleman, through their contact page just to ask about the old physical tiny display tents and why they weren't around anymore. I wasn't holding my breath for a response. I mean, they're a big company. So I spent a bit of time also searching the internet for alternate options to see what other ways you could buy a tiny tent the kind like I grew up seeing. There were some on eBay, a few genuine tiny display tents, but they were selling for about as much, or even more, than full-size tents cost, even right now. I just looked these up to be sure that they're still there. It seems to be a route that's always going to be open, as long as you're willing to pay the price for a ticket. I love these in theory, but I just couldn't justify spending $1 to $200 on one of the tents just for this episode, so I continued my search. I actually ended up finding a few places that sell brand new small tents in this vein, one of which was TinyTentscom. Reading the About Us page on the TinyTentscom website, I discovered yet another pocket of store display tent fans, but they had actually gone out and created a product around it to allow others to get and own something we always were only ever able to visit in the stores. Now, from the look of it, these were a little different than the classic store display tents because they're designed for the purpose of being purchased and assembled by the consumer, whereas the other display tents were specifically designed to be perfect tiny replicas of that full-size tent for each one. Now, as far as I know, these TinyTents that I was looking at were designed to be built just based on their own thing, and they're not adapted down from a full-size tent which already existed. So I happened to discover them just as they were releasing a new model of tent and it was at a price point I could manage, so I went ahead and bought one. I just had to wait for them to ship it to me. But that actually brings us to. We have a sponsor, which means I get to do my first ever ad spot. I bought the tent using some birthday present money, so