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iPad 2 dropped in lava in the name of marketing

Tablet pleads for its life before bursting into flames...all to give away some iPhone cases?

Eric Mack Contributing Editor
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Eric Mack
Apparently Amazon isn't the only one that's learned "Fire sells..." Screenshot by Eric Mack/CNET

If someone sends you a link to a video of an iPad 2 being dropped in hot lava, the only sensible thing to do--once confirming the link is malware-free--is to click it.

This logic seems to be the entire basis for a new marketing campaign from California-based ZooGue, which sells accessories for iPads and other devices. The aforementioned video features ZooGue CEO Tim Angel trekking to a lava flow in Hawaii to lower an iPad 2 into the magma, watch it plead for its existence with a cute "excessive heat" warning, then burst into flames and melt.

There's no ZooGue products to be seen anywhere in the video, nor does there appear to be any real point to the whole exercise, other than to point you in the direction of a link for a free iPhone case from the company.

While it lacks the drama of this skydiving iPad video, I did watch it, click the link and learn that ZooGue exists, so I suppose it's marketing mission accomplished for Mr. Angel, despite my confusion. Check out the video below for yourself and see if I'm missing something...