T2SE. Time to Shoot the Engineer?

What is this product?

A) Photon blaster from the set of Startrek

B) One of those solar-powered racing go-karts designed by MIT students, upside down

C) Don't even go there...

The Answer:  None of the Above.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a ballpoint pen.

The Free Ride pen sells at $150. 

But before I rush off to the website to buy this over-the-top, engineering wonder (brought to my attention by the OhGizmo blog) and make my check-writing experience even more intriguing, I have to ask myself:

Is there a time to "shoot the engineer"? 

I googled this exact saying and got a page of search results which tells me: I am not alone in this question.  Or is it that, in the schoolyard of product development, the marketing bullies have simply come up with new ways to give a "marketing wedgy" of sorts to the engineering kids?  "For once and for all, go play sales and stop breathing down our necks!", the engineers scream.

As OhGizmo blog exclaims, the design and engineering of this pen may have been taken a stretch too far.  This company at least got this pen to market (I wonder how it's selling...).  You've got to hand it to them, because the dirty alley of product development is littered with projects and products that never got into the marketplace and made money for their companies.  If only there was a blackmarket, or even an EBay for works-like prototypes and unfinished CAD drawings...

At some point, you've got to save the next batch of engineering changes for a future product release.  At some point, you need to take the reams of Excel files, Bill of Materials docs, Engineering Requirement docs, and drawings, and stamp "Final" on them.   At some point, you have to look at the money you have in the bank, the calender, and the state of your product design, and figure out that you needed to get your design package to the manufacturer yesterday. 

I'm sure that even the FreeRide pen had only so much time to be designed and engineered before it was built and shipped. 

Your product may be the next space machine or just a better mousetrap.  It doesn't matter.  Just make sure you stop engineering and you start selling before you run out of money or someone designs and sells a better photon blaster than your's.