Ranger Easter Eggs

[zedder]

Have any of you found some of the Easter Eggs Ford has hidden around the Next Gen Ranger?

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[goalieThreeOne]

Obviously I don’t have one in the States yet, but I’ve seen in videos that if you look in the wide slot in front of the shifter, the bottom has a molded in diagram of a pack of French fries.

 

[zedder]

Obviously I don’t have one in the States yet, but I’ve seen in videos that if you look in the wide slot in front of the shifter, the bottom has a molded in diagram of a pack of French fries.

That it does!

This is in the Everest but it's the same in my Wildtrak.

 

[G L Rockwell]

Have any of you found some of the Easter Eggs Ford has hidden around the Next Gen Ranger?

Nice ute.

 

[G L Rockwell]

That it does!

This is in the Everest but it's the same in my Wildtrak.

Nice ute.

 

[G L Rockwell]

Have any of you found some of the Easter Eggs Ford has hidden around the Next Gen Ranger?

Hope we get a wild track here in the states.

 

[zedder]

Hope we get a wild track here in the states.

Thank you! I doubt you will. Doesn't the US have the Premium and Lariat models?

I've seen the bronco Wildtrak in the US?

 

[zedder]

Here are some more Easter Eggs

 

[NC Spuds]

That it does!

This is in the Everest but it's the same in my Wildtrak.

As someone from the potato industry, I wish all vehicles came with a French Fry holder! Too cool & nice find!

 

[carmigo]

That it does!

This is in the Everest but it's the same in my Wildtrak.

It is perfectly shaped for fries...

 

[SGT Ranger]

You guys want to know something sad.

/tin foil hat

Building molds for this stuff is expensive. The more details, the more expensive the tooling generally is. It is also generally accepted practice for businesses to mark up raw materials 15% when calculating sales. (this is completely separate from calculating what you actually charge for profit on a product/component).

It is all a scam to pass on miniscule hidden costs to the consumer to artificially inflate the price tag for raw profit pocketing. Now take this basically undetectable price padding and slowly add them all together in the minor tooling charges for these small details.

"haha these idiots think we are being helpful with french fry icons molded in, but they just made us an extra $20 per unit sold."

Jokes aside, I promise you, it cost more to produce a tray with a french fry icon than a tray without one. The trick is making the amount so silly that as an individual unit it comes off as frivolous, but when made at a massive factory scale it equals real dollars in pockets.

Next thing you know we will have a hand icon on door handles and a foot icon on the pedals.

These types of tricks are by no means a vehicle manufacturer thing, this is a well established practice across a vast amount of production line type products.

 

[zedder]

"Next thing you know we will have a hand icon on door handles and a foot icon on the pedals."

Foot pedal and door handle symbols

I think the cost for such bespoke tooling can be negated if the tools are used for multiple generations which seems to be Fords goal. Yes it costs more, but what cost even more is having a different part for every model.

We can learn from the Lego story here. They almost went bankrupt because they were making way too many bespoke tools for small quantity pieces. Once they standardised their pieces and models to use the same pieces the abnormal cost problem was solved.

Ford could be playing a similar game.

How would I know where my fries are meant to go if the symbol was not there? Huh?

 

[goalieThreeOne]

You guys want to know something sad.

/tin foil hat

Building molds for this stuff is expensive. The more details, the more expensive the tooling generally is. It is also generally accepted practice for businesses to mark up raw materials 15% when calculating sales. (this is completely separate from calculating what you actually charge for profit on a product/component).

It is all a scam to pass on miniscule hidden costs to the consumer to artificially inflate the price tag for raw profit pocketing. Now take this basically undetectable price padding and slowly add them all together in the minor tooling charges for these small details.

"haha these idiots think we are being helpful with french fry icons molded in, but they just made us an extra $20 per unit sold."

Jokes aside, I promise you, it cost more to produce a tray with a french fry icon than a tray without one. The trick is making the amount so silly that as an individual unit it comes off as frivolous, but when made at a massive factory scale it equals real dollars in pockets.

Next thing you know we will have a hand icon on door handles and a foot icon on the pedals.

These types of tricks are by no means a vehicle manufacturer thing, this is a well established practice across a vast amount of production line type products.

I don’t know if agree with this. Let me offer a different perspective.

How many customers are going to buy this truck based purely on the fact that it has a French fry symbol? My guess is zero.

How many customers are going to NOT buy this truck if it did not have a French fry symbol? My guess is also zero.

In other words, the French fry symbol will make no bearing whatsoever on whether someone buys the truck. If Ford wants to make more profit, they could have just left the symbol off and charged the same price and it wouldn’t affect the volume sold. So, in a way, Ford is eating that cost.

 

[SGT Ranger]

I don’t know if agree with this. Let me offer a different perspective.

How many customers are going to buy this truck based purely on the fact that it has a French fry symbol? My guess is zero.

How many customers are going to NOT buy this truck if it did not have a French fry symbol? My guess is also zero.

In other words, the French fry symbol will make no bearing whatsoever on whether someone buys the truck. If Ford wants to make more profit, they could have just left the symbol off and charged the same price and it wouldn’t affect the volume sold. So, in a way, Ford is eating that cost.

You missed the point, the customer is oblivious to the french fry watergate situation either way, but it would be a way on the back end for Ford to add what amounts to a frog in a boiling pot of water money to the MSRP per unit.

Imagine if the french fry icon cost $0.25 extra per unit in the non-disclosed production cost on Ford's in-house books. That 25 cents is calculated based on cost of mold, life of the mold, etc etc. Generally a mold will work for so many units before it breaks down and needs to be replaced, but 25 cents is what they pass on to the customer.

Even if your Raptor's $56,000 dealer sticker actually had "FRENCH FRY ICON ADD-ON" listed on it, you'd see it and be like, "25 cents? Well that is weird, but who cares?" You laugh about it. The dealer laughs about it. Bob the janitor near by laughs about it. Hell it is so funny you take the dealer sticker to your house and frame it on the wall. Now grandma laughs at it. Your neighbor Vinny laughs at it. You show it to everyone and everyone has a good chuckle.

Meanwhile in the share holder boardroom at Ford all the people present are laughing about it too, but while they drink cocktails. The thing is they are laughing for a different reason. They were able to add 25 cents to not only every Raptor, but every other model/trim that uses this same interior piece and the customer thinks its funny and doesn't care. They are also laughing because this frivolous unwarranted addition icon is present in the form of numerous other icons all over the vehicle.

Ford just pulled in hundreds of thousands of dollars for something their customers think is just a funny icon.

Do you really think an engineer is the type of person to add a french fry icon to a component?

Obviously this idea is for entertainment purposes only, but mull it over. This isn't completely fantasy though. This does happen in in the wild with products in the world.

 

[goalieThreeOne]

You missed the point, the customer is oblivious to the french fry watergate situation either way, but it would be a way on the back end for Ford to add what amounts to a frog in a boiling pot of water money to the MSRP per unit.

Imagine if the french fry icon cost $0.25 extra per unit in the non-disclosed production cost on Ford's in-house books. That 25 cents is calculated based on cost of mold, life of the mold, etc etc. Generally a mold will work for so many units before it breaks down and needs to be replaced, but 25 cents is what they pass on to the customer.

Even if your Raptor's $56,000 dealer sticker actually had "FRENCH FRY ICON ADD-ON" listed on it, you'd see it and be like, "25 cents? Well that is weird, but who cares?" You laugh about it. The dealer laughs about it. Bob the janitor near by laughs about it. Hell it is so funny you take the dealer sticker to your house and frame it on the wall. Now grandma laughs at it. Your neighbor Vinny laughs at it. You show it to everyone and everyone has a good chuckle.

Meanwhile in the share holder boardroom at Ford all the people present are laughing about it too, but while they drink cocktails. The thing is they are laughing for a different reason. They were able to add 25 cents to not only every Raptor, but every other model/trim that uses this same interior piece and the customer thinks its funny and doesn't care. They are also laughing because this frivolous unwarranted addition icon is present in the form of numerous other icons all over the vehicle.

Ford just pulled in hundreds of thousands of dollars for something their customers think is just a funny icon.

Do you really think an engineer is the type of person to add a french fry icon to a component?

Obviously this idea is for entertainment purposes only, but mull it over. This isn't completely fantasy though. This does happen in in the wild with products in the world.

If Ford wanted to add $.25 to the MSRP there’s nothing stopping them. They don’t need to add a French fry symbol to do that. Having worked as an engineer in manufacturing, the fight on adding features is usually between engineers on one side and marketing, supply chain, and accounting on another. It was likely a discussion point that required engineering to justify its decision to the other parties. But also, it probably wasn’t a very big one. Given that it’s non functional, aesthetic only, the engineers were probably more concerned about the other side where tolerances for clips, structural ribbing, and part labeling would be more important. If s French fry icon gets a little less aesthetic, they don’t have to swap the molds. But if clips get out of spec, they do. So I think this is more of a “why not?” Situation. If the icon was, let’s say, a picture of a phone to indicate phone storage or even a little Ford logo, none of us would have bat an eyelash.

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