Awfully expensive off brand

I followed one of the google links above and found this odd brand. They have a $50 racket:

http://www.jaqueslondon.com/shop/ping_pong/ping_pong_bats/powerspin_torsion.html

ever heard of these guys? Are they approved?

According to wikipedia this company has been around for a long time.  They invented croquet, snakes a ladders, and chess sets.  Since they are this old they I think they might have been manufacturing table tennis equipment since the advent of table tennis.

Yes, Jaques of london have been a manufacturer of Table Tannis equipment from the early days and we still use Jaques tables at my club and for coaching.

They play better than most of the modern tables I've played on. 

Apparently Jaques of London (together with Parker Bros in US) had almost complete stranglehold on table tennis in the beginning of the 20th century... and there were numerous battles for copyright and for making their rules and their equipment a de-facto and de-jure standard.. which led to some unfortunate consequences -  some of them apparent today as TT is often considered to be just some quirky free-time entertainment similar to darts or beer-pong

They basically lost the chance to turn the game into more than it is today... although they naturally had no idea they were doing that at the time

It comes with "quality outback sandwich rubber", so you know it's good!