With those choices, I'll take the $24 blender. I don't need a known brand name to ensure that the product will blend. And, if I need to buy three of them during the same amount of time that your $89 model lasts, I will still be saving money.
And you think that you are a smart consumer?
I am looking to get the iPad Air, though.
Boom. This. Going by brand name alone is equally as stupid as basing your entire decision on price. A name doesn't always guarantee quality, and a lower price doesn't mean you're buying cheap crap by going cheap.
Put simply, you get what you need. If I were running a kitchen in a restaurant, or did a ton of cooking, I'd get a Cuisinart. You want to pay more for that extra bit of sturdiness, which means it'll last longer in a high stress environment where it's used for hours on end. But someone who cooks a single meal for the family once a night, and uses the blender for maybe 15 minutes, the $30 option will last them for at least a couple of years, and blend just as well as the Cuisinart.
And what happens if the brand name lets you down? It's been known to happen. Cuisinart could have a bad run of blenders for a couple of years that damage the brand, which means you'd be screwed by buying one of their blenders on name alone. You spend more money for it, and it ends up blowing up 6 months later. Everyone makes a dud product at some point.
On top of that, people who buy on brand name alone tend to be more prejudiced against other brands. Case in point...here. BBeagle said "Samsung, not a good brand", completely ignoring the fact that while it's not a good brand to
him, it is quickly becoming one to everyone else. We're all bashing the Surface tablet around here as cheap, badly designed crap, disregarding the fact that Microsoft is still one of the top 5 trusted brand names in America at the moment. Even though it's not selling well, someone could still walk into a store and buy it on brand name alone. So who's right? Who's wrong?
Well, I'd say I'm right, because I'm smart, and the people who disagree with me are stupid and don't know what they're talking about. Yeah, that's how these things usually go.
The simple fact is, it's impossible to make a 100% completely informed decision about the things we buy, and we all lean on stupid metrics at some point while making them. There's no reason to judge someone else because they made a different stupid decision than the stupid decision you likely would've made in the same situation.
and I won't have to worry about trying to get one on Friday. I will be sleeping in my warm bed and not waiting in line in 20 degree weather 
