Interesting story about Canon's "flimsy" hoods

A few days back when I was at the Canon Service center I made a comment about the hoods on the two lenses I have. I told the service rep that the hoods seemed flimsy and not too rigid. I was told that Canon made them that was on purpose!!!!! The claim is that if they are knocked into something the hood acts as a shock asorber!!!!! Interesting!

Just like the crumple zones on modern cars

Not a problem of being flimsy but maybe poor design -
The lens hoods for the 100mm f/2.8 macro and the 70-200mm f/2.8 IS have small plastic 'springs' that are used to snap into the detents on the front of the lens. These small plastic pieces are a light friction fit into their slots. With only 1 years usage, one of the plastic 'springs' fell out of the hood of my 100mm lens making for a very sloppy mount on the lens. After replacing it with a hand formed piece of plastic, I added a drop super glue to each 'spring' slot in my lens hoods to help prevent another occurance of this loss.

Paul
http://www.iaw.com/~pt​urton/

and the chance to sell us some more new hoods, if we were to lose them....

Doesn't that mean the $5 rubber hoods make an even better shock absorber?

I think those are TOOOOOOO FLIMSY then....

The $5 rubber hood I have wouldn't crumple, it would sort of "run away" and provide absolutely NO protection whatsoever if dropped.

I can see how the Canon hoods I have would help minimize damage over completely rigid hoods -- but whether or not they will help, I hope to goodness I will never learn if that technician's comment is correct.

Just as with the crumple-zones in my car -- I hope to simply take on faith that they are there and that they work -- I never want to test them firsthand.