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I haven’t heard about any new Crescent Tool products in a long time, so I dug around to see if I missed anything.
There’s nothing new, but I did find some YouTube videos with instructions on how to demonstrate the competitive advantages of Crescent hand tools.
Okay, so first you gather your tools. That part’s straightforward.
The Channellock straight-jaw Speed Grip pliers is the “preferred competitor product.” Interesting.
Then you grab Crescent Auto-Bite pliers with V-jaw profile.
After showing how well the Crescent pliers work, you show how bad the competitive product is at grabbing a custom-made demo jig with stepped grooves.
The competing product will need to be readjusted to fit a different size.
Repeat on additional grooves in the custom pliers testing jig to emphasize that point.
Got it.
Wait.
I generally don’t like comparative testing demonstrations by any brand.
But why would Crescent demo the USA-made Channellock straight-jaw pliers against their own V-jaw pliers? Channellock ALSO has V-jaw pliers that would make for an apples-to-apples comparison.
The Crescent Auto-Bite pliers are pretty good, which makes this comparison especially disappointing.
I consider Crescent’s Auto-Bite pliers to be a mash-up between standard tongue and groove pliers and Knipex Cobra pliers. You can get the equivalent Gearwrench Pitbull pliers for a little less ($20 at Amazon), and I prefer the Gearwrench color scheme as well. (Both brands are owned by Apex Tool Group.)
I tend to not like competitive demos, and even more so when they’re not as fair as possible. Comparing v-jaw adjusting pliers to straight jaw adjusting pliers is not fair.
In another demo how-to video, Crescent highlights poorer pipe gripping of Channellock straight jaw pliers. Competing Channellock v-jaw pliers would have been more appropriate there too, as straight-jaw pliers often do slip on pipes.
I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and consider this unintentional.
This is a good example of why I don’t like competitive demos at media events, trade shows, or elsewhere.
Here’s the video, titled “Crescent Auto-Bite Tongue & Groove Pliers Demo Instructions”:
