The two biggest advantages of anything that's the fad for a season, not a real reason:
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to the manufacturer:Uncountable legions of shooters
have to have whatever is new and different -- irrespective of whether it's superior or inferior to what they already have -- just
because it's new and different. And of course they'll not only buy the .888 New-Different Mountain-Crumbler, they'll also swallow and spout all the advertising flacks' and press pimps' balderdash about its alleged "crucial superiority" while they blithely ignore any and every disadvantage and impracticality of it, however great or bothersome they may be.
In a word, the advantage to the manufacturers is many shooters' eager
gullibility. The classic historic example is the .460 Weatherby, which the factory couldn't produce as fast as the orders came in right after it was announced.
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to the shooter:The ability to crow "I've got one, but not everybody has 'em." When my old friend Iver Henriksen was The Gun Guy at the city's biggest sporting-goods store, a shooter came in to trade his rifle in on another. He wasn't in any way dissatisfied with its performance, and he didn't have a glimmer of a specific preference -- he just wanted something new and different.
Back then, the manufacturers weren't announcing their new solutions to previously nonexistent problems every year, so Iver didn't have a ready suggestion to offer. What he usually had was plenty of new and "experienced" .30-06s. So he asked the guy "How about an aught-six? That's a good cartridge."
"Nah," the customer said, "Aught-sixes are like ___holes -- everybody's got one."
(It occurs to me at this point that I'm the only guy I know whose a'hole doesn't work well according to design specifications. I have to -- oh, never mind.... ) <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />
