When Viral Videos Go Wrong: Fat Guys With Knives

Unlike most unintentionally hilarious videos, where you find yourself baffled trying to discover the very thought process of the person or persons making the video, the promotional videos for Cold Steel leave nothing to the imagination. It’s not just that they have a product to sell, or that they love the product without realizing how dorky they’re being.

It’s that they genuinely believe killing a bunny with a modified screwdriver is awesome, especially if what you’re throwing is named after some badass firearm that’s illegal outside of warzones. And not just “day off” awesome, or “good beer” awesome; more along the lines of “driving-a-burning-van-full-of-naked-women-off-a-cliff-while-soloing-Metallica-and-punching-Bin-Laden-in-the-nuts” awesome.

Here, see for yourself:

That fat guy in the too-tight shorts, knocking over wood bunnies in an office park? He thinks he’s badass. The guy who spends a solid minute hucking spikes at a steel water barrel in the least graceful way possible? He thinks he’s achieving something. Even better are the watermelon-splitting demonstrations, shown in gloriously ridiculous slow motion. Lest you think I’m joking, watch this:

Welcome to the wonderful, weird world of Cold Steel Knives, a world of hard steel weapons wielded by men who look like accountants, the cheapest royalty-free metal, diced pig parts, a smooth-voiced announcer reading ridiculously macho ad copy, and ridiculous amounts of slow motion.

In other words, Cold Steel has made hilarious putting together two words that before were just creepy. Cold Steel has given us professional knife porn, where before we just had to look at sharp objects strewn around some loser’s apartment.

There really aren’t words to emphasize how unintentionally awesome some of these videos are. Especially since they’re essentially videos from one to ten minutes long of grown men chopping up wood, pig heads, and big blocks of ice. Take their nearly ten-minute long video of their Two Handed Great Sword:

They want to very, very firmly establish that this great sword can kill any pipes, wooden targets, or tatami mats that may be threatening you.

But as dorkily great as the video demonstrations are, in the end it’s the voiceovers that offer the true comedy potential. We have to give the announcer credit for being an absolute professional and never cracking once. Here he is pretending that there is a remote possibility you’ll take Cold Steel’s War Hammer out on the fields of battle and therefore have to worry about the head getting cut off:

Or, to offer another example of what an absolute professional this unnamed announcer is, here he extolling the killing virtues of a sword, as if he were selling to William Wallace instead of Ren Faire attendees:

But probably his height of achievement comes with the video for the Indian War Club, which has, by far, the most over-the-top ad copy, our personal favorite being the closing line “it smashes all in its path, while being kind and gentle on your wallet.”

Cold Steel has finally given us what we never knew we wanted; Mythbusters that make us feel better about ourselves just by looking at them. You can get all 280 self-esteem boosts/slow-motion blade porn at Cold Steel’s YouTube account.