[dang]

A friend of mine who grew up in Spokane, WA told me that for some reason Spokane was regarded as the ideal product testing ground by big American corporations, and so he and his friends encountered a lot of weird products that never succeeded, and a few major ones that they saw years before everyone else. Anybody know if this is true?

[Eric_WVGG]

I heard that story about Columbus, Ohio. I think “the industry” has a shortlist, though. https://www.columbusmonthly.com/article/20150126/LIFESTYLE/3...

[austinjp]

Okay, now I really want to see that shortlist and visit each place or watch a good documentary visit them and uncover the strange merch.

[ahartmetz]

There's a place like that in Germany. The most average place is actually a rather strange place. It is known as "the biggest village of Germany" (it never got promoted to a town despite having 10k residents) and it bears the somewhat ugly name "Haßloch", meaning roughly "hate hole". As you might imagine, the name is a corruption of an earlier name a long time ago.

I knew a guy there whose parents, sure enough, were giving data to several market research companies.