My two cents on Mailbag Monday:
I do like to see a regular mailbag segment return more often. I have traditionally found them interesting to see what goodies you've been sent. I don't mind if they are shorter or a longer 30-45 minutes or even an hour per video.
What I have found, though, is that over time you have tended to increasingly go into far more depth on each item, on average. For this episode, for example, rather than go on for more than 15 minutes about the screwdriver, I would prefer to have seen you open more mailbag items and save more in-depth teardowns or first looks / reviews for a separate video. For this episode, you could easily have opened three or four packages and explored what was inside in the time it took you to go on for 15 minutes about the silly screwdriver.
My preference would be for items that take are going to take more than about 5 minutes to be split into a separate video. You could easily combine several teardowns or more in depth looks if they aren't extensive enough to warrant a separate video.
For a mailbag episode the length of today's video I don't see why you couldn't have opened more like 10 items. I think the screwdriver tryout should be its own video. Ditto for the tangent about the crazy schematic of the Hassoscope and trying it out. Why are you going into all the detail of setting up the unit and testing it out, looking at the project itself and the schematic during a mailbag episode? i would think that deserves a separate video for several reasons. For example, I think separate videos would make them easier to refer to later and doesn't clog up the mailbag episode and may be of interest to people who didn't watch that particular mailbag episode.
I have a feeling that many people end up fast forwarding some of those things and even though they might be interested in some of the more in-depth stuff, may never go back and watch some of those bits. I know I have done that. A separate video would make it much easier to pick and choose those things to go back and watch in more depth when you're interested in a certain item rather than having to go back and find the mailbag episode.
I would think a typical mailbag item should be 3-5 minutes per item. If a "two minute teardown" isn't appropriate,
save the teardown for another video and get on with more of everyone's favorite segment,
MAILBAG! ![Smiley :)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xsmiley.gif.pagespeed.ic.R8GFI-pF6f.png)