YoshiBlade (ceramic knife) – A Marketing Review

One of the more common TV marketing commercials is for the YoshiBlade (warning – the website does not work properly for people using Firefox!), a ceramic knife designed to be used in the kitchen.

Being claimed to be “the last knife you’ll ever need,” it turns out that the commercial and company website may be embellishing a little more than it should to sell the product.  In fact, parts of the commercial come close to outright lying to the customer.

Perhaps the biggest question is, is the YoshiBlade a scam?

These questions and more will be addressed in this detailed marketing review.

Slightly older  TV commercial for the YoshiBlade ceramic knife.

Before we begin, there are some things to know about ceramic knives in general.

For starters, ceramic knives are made out of zirconium oxide (commonly known as zirconia).  Both the TV commercial and website like to mention the zirconium oxide part as if it’s really going to convince people to buy the knife.  On the Mohs mineral hardness scale, yes, zirconia does rank as being harder than hardened steel.  The important part (the part that’s left out of the commercial and extremely uninformative website) is that being hard does not mean that the ceramic blade is tough or even flexible.

In fact, the most common complaint about ceramic knives in general is that they are extremely brittle and it’s very easy to chip the blade! Putting the blade in the dishwasher next to silverware can cause it to get chipped along with just using it improperly on the wrong type of cutting board.  The bottom line is that you have to be extremely careful when handling and using a ceramic knife.

The best foods for cutting with ceramic knives include boneless meat and poultry along with fresh vegetables and fruits.  Anything tough, frozen or involves medium to heavy chopping, prying or hard pressing will most likely break the knife’s blade.

Because of the ceramic knife’s hardness, it takes an even harder material to sharpen it.  You’ll need to either send the knife back to the factory to have it sharpened or invest in a sharpener with some type of diamond coating.

Advantages of ceramic knives include its generally lighter weight when compared to metal knives, and since it’s ceramic, it won’t rust.  They also generally retain their sharpness longer than an average steel knife.

Now let’s take a look at the TV commercial.

You know that you’re looking at a biased advertisement when it starts out showing an “average” cutting knife mangling a tomato.  It probably doesn’t help that the person doing the slicing is intentionally doing it wrong, pressing hard with a (dull?) blade while also pressing on (not really slicing) a semi-soggy tomato.  Of course it won’t cut properly!

The commercial then cuts (pun intended, har! har!) to a scene showing a person slicing quickly and cutting off the skin of a pineapple followed by doing thin slices on a tomato.  Well, I can easily do that with my ordinary steel kitchen knives.  The trick is having at least a semi-sharp, serrated blade and keep the knife moving back and forth at a fairly brisk pace.  Slightly press down on the knife while slicing back and forth and you’ll cut right through a pineapple.  The trick for slicing tomatoes is to slice them immediately after pulling them out of the fridge.  Notice that the tomato’s skin doesn’t bend much when it’s gripped by the person’s hand.  Either the tomato is fresh off the vine or it is very cold and fresh out of the refrigerator.

The professional chef’s claim of the knife being as sharp “on day 500 as it was on day one out of the box” is highly disputed.  Many people on a variety of websites have complained that although it was sharp, it didn’t keep its sharpness for anywhere near as long as advertised.  The knife’s sharpness will vary depending on how it is used and how well a person maintains it.  Its sharpness will also depend on how often you use the knife.  A ceramic knife sitting in a box and barely being used will A) not rust, and B) keep its sharp, serrated edge for a significant length of time.

As far as the woman chopping an onion with the YoshiBlade, well, don’t press too hard and keep hitting the cutting board if you want to protect the blade.

It’s a joke in the next scene when a person is basically slapping a steel knife with a cucumber and not having it get cut, but when it’s slapped against the YoshiBlade (complete with actually hitting the knife’s edge hard), it magically cuts the vegetable.  Again, I have absolutely no problems at all slicing, cutting and chopping fruits and vegetables with my cheap stainless steel knives.  That hardness test with the cucumber is meaningless when two slightly different procedures were used to demonstrate how the steel knife was seemingly inferior to the YoshiBlade.

The scene in the TV commercial with the YoshiBlade replacing a drawer full of kitchen knives is probably the most questionable scene in the entire commercial.  Because of its brittleness, medium sized blade length (5″ according to the small text at the bottom of the website) and inability to handle tough cutting jobs, ceramic knives in general only have partial usage at best in an ordinary kitchen.  There’s no way that the YoshiBlade in the TV commercial can compete with any other knife that needs hard pressing, chopping, intricate cutting, flexibility or a long blade.  Accidentally press down at an incorrect angle and you’ll snap the blade of a ceramic knife every time.

The claim that the knife is guaranteed to stay sharp is rather interesting.  The TV commercial is a bit old with the “guarantee for life claim,” whereas the advertisement that plays on the updated website just makes the more generic “always sharp” and “whose sharpness is guaranteed” claims.

The big question is, how long do they believe that the knife will stay sharp?

More importantly, how long do you honestly expect the ceramic knife to stay sharp?

The commercial implies that the knife will stay sharp forever, but if you look and listen to the commercial and website carefully, that claim is never made.  It’s implied, but as we all know, implying that a product has features when it really doesn’t is virtually the same as outright lying.  It all depends on the sharpness (another pun) of the person interested in purchasing the product.  Assume the worst, hope for the best.  Never make a purchase based on what something is implied to do without having hard evidence to prove or disprove it.

The YouTube commercial goes on with outdated freebies and other information about the product.  The website’s commercial basically ends with the two-for-one offer for two YoshiBlades and two ceramic peelers for the price of $19.99 (plus shipping and handling, of course).

That’s the TV commercial for the YoshiBlade in a nutshell.

The company has to resort to unfair comparisons with the YoshiBlade to an “average” steel knife to make it look like an awesome product.  It implies that the knife is a hardcore, versatile knife made to handle almost any situation, which with basic knowledge about ceramic knives, we know that it just isn’t true.  The commercial does show basic cutting and slicing jobs that the ceramic knife can easily handle as it was designed to do.  But implying that the YoshiBlade will virtually replace all of your other kitchen knives just isn’t true.

The company’s website is a complete joke.  It’s a flashy landing page with nearly all the promises as in the commercial (complete with it even playing the current TV commercial).

Specific details about the knife are absent.  The claim about it being “the last knife you’ll ever need” is quite far-fetched.  There is no hard data about the knife’s guaranteed sharpness.  Good luck finding any information about a refund policy, if it even exists.

So is the YoshiBlade a scam?

No.

Ceramic knives do serve a useful purpose in the kitchen and in a few spots outside of the kitchen.  Used and maintained properly, the YoshiBlade can slice and chop just as advertised in the commercial.  The tricks involve being well aware of its brittleness and being very careful as far as slicing and chopping items.

It doesn’t help that the commercial does a rather unfair comparison to ordinary steel knives and implies that ceramic knives are more useful than in reality.

Another common complaint with the YoshiBlade is the ordering process itself.

I tested the system using a test credit card number designed for testing check-out procedures.  After filling out the order form with obvious test/generic information and giving it a credit card number designed for testing systems, I hit the big ORDER NOW / CLICK HERE button on the bottom of the form.  This was for informational purposes only to verify the final price of a product no different than taking an item to a cash register just to check the price.

WARNING – Once you click on the ORDER NOW / CLICK HERE button, you’re basically locked in the ordering process.  There is NOT a final order confirmation button! You’ll be given about four or five pages of the company upselling and trying to get you to purchase more ceramic knives.  Before you know it you’ll be looking at the “Your order has been received and will be processed” screen.

The screen says to wait a few business days before calling customer service about any questions.  It claims that it takes a few days for your information to be entered into their system.  Unless they do that by hand, I find that claim hard to believe with today’s automated processes.

The fact that there is no final order confirmation button is going to give a lot of people an uneasy feeling.  Is it wrong not to do so?  Technically no.  It’s just nice to let them know that if they take the time to fill out the form and give it a valid credit card number, you’re committing to the order by pressing that great big button on the bottom of the screen.

The good thing with the ordering process is that there really are no hidden tricks or fees.  As long as you click “no” to each offer, the final price for the buy-one-get-one-free offer turns out to be $19.99 for the first set and $16.98 for shipping, a grand total of $36.97.

Some people have claimed much higher prices on the final screen, but they must have clicked yes to one of the offers or accidentally ordered two sets or something.  I followed the instructions and the final price came out just as it should have in theory.

The bottom line here is that while ceramic knives are useful, they’re not for everybody.  Do not expect them to be the perfect solution for preparing food in the kitchen.  They are very brittle and easy to break if not used and cared for properly.

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For more information about the YoshiBlade, please visit the company’s website.

RellimZone.com is not affiliated with YoshiBlade.