The dumbest souvenir of the year

My favorite place to chill out in Italy is the little town of Varenna on Lake Como. The only souvenirs that I have of my time there are a few photos and some very fond memories. But apparently the region is no offering a quite silly souvenir for tourists.

It’s an empty can, but it contains 400 ml of pure, ‘clean’ air from Lake Como. It also has nitrogen (78 percent), oxygen (21 percent), argon (0.93 percent), carbon dioxide (0.04 percent), neon (0.0018 percent), and a few more ingredients.

One catch is they’re not available online. People have to visit select stores around Como to acquire them because the idea is to draw visitors into the must-visit destinations in the area using the influence of the air in cans. ‘Only those who visit Lake Como can want to buy our souvenir. Memories are not bought but lived,’ as written on the Lake Como Air site. The shelf life of the souvenir is infinite, and once opened, owners can reuse the recyclable packaging of the the Lake Como Air cans as a pen holder, plant pot, or stationery container.

This frivolous gimmick by the Como-based agency ItalyComunica follows other touristy souvenirs on offer such as canned air from Rome, Athens, London, California, Beijing, Patagonia, Wroclaw, Norway, and more. There’s even canned fresh Icelandic mountain air sold as a souvenir for tourists visiting the island nation. But at €9.90 a can, this seems to be the dumbest souvenir in a long line of expensive tat.

 

 

 

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