Jeff - you recommend these themes to your users but did not explain why you think they are worth the astonishingly high price. In fact, you did not even mention the price, despite the fact that Jason is establishing a significantly different pricing strategy from the current norm, in which you buy a theme and are entitled to updates, for that particular theme, for life (or for at least as many years as the theme is still being sold).

Good commercial theme sellers provide those occasional updates so that the themes continue to work as WordPress gradually changes but ThemeGarden customers will only continue to have working themes if they keep buying subscriptions. I am surprised you didn't take the opportunity to discuss this new approach to customers, surely it would be of interest to your readers?

What makes the subscriptions truly obscene is that Jason is charging far more than long-established sellers, with a good track record, who offer extensive libraries of themes in varied styles, built on clever frameworks, as opposed to ThemeGarden's TWO themes that, frankly, are more than a little reminiscent of all Jason's other designs at his previous business, Press75.

I never thought I would come across pricing more ridiculous than iThemes $500 All-Access packages (I like iThemes but, with that pricing, Cory handed the premium theme market to StudioPress and WooThemes) but at least iThemes give you unlimited lifetime use of their 30 existing themes,the Builder framework and whatever other themes the team there ever add to their collection.

The same $500 at ThemeGarden will only give you a 5 years of upgrades for the 2 themes so far plus whatever else Jason, as just one guy, manages to finish during those 5 years.

Another contrast is StudioPress' collection of 23 great-looking themes, 13 of which have already been transitioned over to the Genesis Framework, which received an enthusiastic review in Aaron Brazell's detailed comparative review, a fortnight ago, of the four leading frameworks. Each child theme is only $25 on top of the $50 framework (which you buy only once), and you receive lifetime updates for both the framework and any child themes you buy.

Alternatively, you can pay $250 for lifetime updates for all current and future StudioPress themes. Most importantly, regardless of whether you buy one theme or a lifetime membership, there are no dumb, unenforceable limits on how many sites you can use the themes on.

It is Jason's business, he can charge what he wants and customers are perfectly free not to buy if they think he is charging too much but you, Jeff, as a reviewer, should be looking at it from the consumer's perspective and not politely ignoring the elephant in the room.

It also gives unrealistic expectations to all the designers and developers who are following your current series of podcasts on commercial themes and plugins - if they are considering selling their own work and they see that even themes at those crazy prices receive your recommendation, it's going to give them nutty expectations of how high they can pitch their own prices and, ultimately, that will kill their businesses faster than anything else.

Whatever Jason is smoking, you shouldn't be encouraging newbie sellers to take a toke from the same pipe.