What's In Your Cart, Fozzy Whittaker?

Welcome to What’s In Your Cart, where we ask noteworthy readers and followers on @KinjaDeals and @ItsTheInventory about their favorite products, their shopping habits, and their deal hunting acumen. This week, we’re kicking things off with Fozzy Whittaker, a seven year-veteran NFL running back and special teamer, and noted fan of Kinja Deals.


Would you consider yourself a deal hunter?

Most definitely.

When you’re shopping for products, do you decide what you want to buy, then wait for a deal. Or do you make purchase decisions based on what’s on sale?

I’m kind of a mix of both; it depends on what it is in terms of the price range as to what category I fall under. So just recently I bought a thermal imaging scope, a rifle scope, for hunting. And those things cost over $2,000 for even your entry level ones. So for something of that magnitude, I’ll research to figure out which one I want, and then I’ll try to find out if there’s a deal coming up, or what specials they may run at certain times, and I’ll jump on it once it goes on sale.

Now, something like Amazon’s Echo Dots, which are on sale right now; I don’t necessarily need another Echo Dot, but because it’s $25 or $30, I’ll buy another one.

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What’s the best deal you’ve ever gotten?

Probably a washer and dryer on Black Friday two years ago. That was at Best Buy. We’d just closed on our house, and we were looking for appliances to go in, and the washer and dryer combo was basically half off.

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Those are stressful purchases, I know.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, well it hasn’t failed me yet!

What’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever ordered online?

I bought a .308 Daniel Defense rifle online; it was about $2,700 when I bought it last year. I checked it out at a little hunting store in South Carolina called Nichols Gun Store, and then ordered it from there later.

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What would you say is your favorite place to shop online, and in person?

I get in trouble every time I go onto Amazon. In person, it’s probably Best Buy. I’m an electronics guy, I love electronics. So especially whenever you guys post the DJI drones and camera stuff, I get in trouble for those all the time.

You have drones?

Yeah, I’ve got the Mavic Pro, and then I also had the Phantom 3 before I got the Mavic Pro.

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What’s something you bought recently that really exceeded your expectations?

I’m not going to lie to you, I got the Amazon Echo—I have the Dots and the regular Echo—and they do a lot of great things with their integrations, all the things they can connect to. That exceeded my expectations. I didn’t expect to use them to turn on my Xbox, turn on my lights. I knew it could do that, but actually seeing it and setting things up how I wanted them set up around the house, I didn’t expect it to function as well as it does. I’ve gotta give it to Amazon.

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Are you a big smart home guy? You have smart lights, smart locks, all that stuff?

Not everything, but I’m starting to move in that direction. The next purchase will probably be a smart lock, I just haven’t done my research to see which one I want to get yet, but that’ll probably be the next thing. But we have the garage door opener that I can connect to the Echo, or link to my phone with an app.

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What’s something that you bought recently that you didn’t like so much, or maybe even had to return?

Clothes, probably [laughs]. I get in trouble going clothes shopping. I actually just returned like five pairs of clothes from Nike just because they didn’t fit like I wanted.

What’s the best gift you’ve received recently?

My wife actually surprised me with a scooter. A gas scooter, like a moped, about two weeks ago for my birthday, and I was in heaven. I grew up riding motorcycles in high school with my brother, and then I promised my wife I wouldn’t ride a motorcycle after we had our first child. But she knew how much I was still itching to be on two wheels so she bought me this moped, and that was everything for me.

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Just be sure to wear your helmet.

Oh yeah, I’ve got all sorts of accessories. I’ve been on cyclegear.com buying gloves, hats, shoes, reflective wear. [laughs]

What’s the last thing you remember buying through Kinja Deals?

I buy so many of those Anker charging cables, and the USB chargers.

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You can never have enough of those.

They make a pretty good product. If I had to pick another thing that exceeded my expectations, it’d be that.

What are three items around your house that you couldn’t live without?

Number one is probably my camera. I have a Canon Rebel T7i, I love that thing.

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Number two is probably my Echo Dot, or my Echo, those things are excellent.

Number three is probably my Xbox One.

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Between the T7i and the drones, it sounds like you’re pretty into photography?

I am! I try to get different shots, and different perspectives, just randomly. I don’t do it every week, but I kind of turned it into a hobby. So I go out whenever I feel like shooting some animals, birds, the landscape, the surrounding areas, I’ll go on a trail walk and just photographs of whatever I see. Same thing with the drone, I just go out to the neighborhood; I live by a golf course, so I go out to the golf course and and see a lot of wildlife. There are a lot of deer that live on that course, so I’ll see where they’re going and what they’re doing every now and then.

What other gear do you use for that?

Those two things are my biggest photography products. I do have a Traxxas X-Maxx remote control truck. It’s a ⅕ scale electric RC truck, and that thing goes fast. That is a really cool toy to play with because it’s so big. It picks up some speed, and it’s pretty tough too. So those three things are what I like playing with the most. The RC truck, the drone, and my camera.

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Do you ever use the drone to help with the hunting you do?

No, it’s actually illegal to fly the drone to locate animals that you’re hunting. I don’t know how you’d get caught, but I haven’t done that. But you never know, maybe they’ll change the law.

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Is there something you buy a lot of in your profession that might seem strange to someone who isn’t a professional athlete?

I wouldn’t say anything out of the ordinary, but I got to Costco a lot. I buy a lot of stuff from there, but most of the time it’s just stuff like water, fruits. I go to Amazon to buy teatree soap, a body wash that I use because I have sensitive skin, so I buy a lot of that every so often. It helps with athlete’s foot and preventing staph breakouts.

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What are the last three things in your Amazon order history?

It’s funny, we were just talking about that soap, and that’s in there. I bought the teatree soap yesterday. A couple days before that I bought Ballistol multi-purpose oil; it’s an aerosol spray to help clean your weapons, so you break your gun down and spray it with this to lubricate and clean it. And I got some spikes for my moped helmet [laughs].

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What are the last three things you looked at on Amazon that you didn’t end up buying?

I told you I just bought my thermal rifle scope, so I was researching thermal zeroing targets to take it to the range to zero it in. I lost a remote to my Dyson fan, so I was looking at the prices for a replacement. Most of the recent stuff is mostly related to the gun I just bought for my birthday.

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You like the Dyson fan?

Yeah, it’s a fan and humidifier combo. I’ve gotten in trouble with their vacuums and humidifiers and fans. I have like five different Dyson things.

Are there any specific products that you really want to buy, that you’ve put in your cart, but you never actually pull the trigger on?

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Yeah, the new Mavic Pro. I’ve been going back and forth with that, like “man, I’ve already got a drone.” I think if they’d only come out with one model, I probably would have already bought it. But since they came out with two models, I don’t know which one to get out of those two, which I think has delayed my process of actually buying one.

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