“What iiiiiiiis UP guys?” If you’ve been into knives and the unique culture that surrounds them on the internet, that phrase probably elicits a Pavlovian response in your head – assuming you’re a fan of YouTube knife videos. Ben Peterson was the face of BladeHQ’s YouTube channel from 2011 until 2013, then had a stint at CRKT from 2013-2016 creating digital content, before bouncing back to BladeHQ from 2016 until 2019 when he left. Over that time, he grew BladeHQ’s YouTube presence to an absolute monolith in the category, largely on the back of his extremely popular Knife Banter series that he participated in for 75 episodes. His iconic greeting still rings in the ears of his fans (and even features on the knife we’ll eventually start discussing, I promise.) BladeHQ has over 700k followers at time of writing, and no small portion of that is due to Ben.
I have one, but my daughter claimed it, so I haven’t used it much. Nothing I saw in this review was out of line with my experience wit the Lander.