That sort of "luxury" ice was refined and distilled down to a throwaway gag in "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt".

Kimmy asks a rich boyfriend to bring ice for a party, and he arrives carrying a hinged, dovetail-jointed wooden box, lined with velvet, containing ornate ice tongs and six perfect ice cubes. The only way it could possibly be funnier is if they were all perfect ice spheres.

I have a friend who makes high-end violin, &c, bows (think: five-figure price tags) who was recently at a conference of sorts for musicians, bow makers, and such.

An acquaintance of his was carrying a Stradivarius, on loan from some foundation or other which had it insured for a silly amount of money. The acquaintance played it during a performance at this event. To my friend's somewhat experienced ears, it actually sounded pretty flat (not poorly tuned, but rather dull), relative to so many of the other instruments he's heard. In telling me about this, he didn't seem particularly surprised by that.

It's anecdata, but it clearly supports the notion that people will pay mightily for a name and attendant reputation, over actual quality.

The classical world has created a tautological definition of violin quality - a good violin is one that sounds most like a Stradivarius. With modern luthiery techniques, it's not difficult to build a relatively inexpensive instrument that's brighter or darker or more powerful or has more complex overtones, but any "improvement" will be perceived as a deviation from that ideal. Blind tests of violins are remarkably rare, which I think is a largely deliberate decision.

I'm reminded of the Judgement of Paris:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine)

I happened to see a YouTube blind-test of a flute, and the next to cheapest flute won.

But blind testing is also hard, maybe you need to listen or taste for days,not just a few minutes.

I suspect a lot of sugar and artificial flavours are added to products as people are reacting favourably in 30 second blind tests, but given a chance they would appreciate the nuances of less engineered products. The sugar and the esters are getting old fast.

You know man this why blind wine tasting started.

appealing to people's pretentiousness and such is a fine art and many a marketing scheme has arisen to do just that. exclusivity by price is just one feature. at these price points you can go all out on ingredients as well as packaging. in many cases packaging itself has more effort put into it than the product.

Fully agree. Just wanted to preface by acknowledging that not _all_ products are created equal.