Trend Shop Archive

  • iHeart: “Jewelry Box” speaker and dock for your iPhone/iPod

    iHeart: “Jewelry Box” speaker and dock for your iPhone/iPod

    Posted on January 22, 2010 | No Comments
    This one is for the the ladies: A cute, heart-shaped active speaker box for the iPhone or iPod that doubles as a dock and also offers a mirror that pops up when you open it. Aptly named iHeart [JP], the "Jewelry Box Speaker" is the brain child of a Japanese company called Marubeni Infotec.

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  • Nintendo Game and Watch: Cult reborn as keyholders (video)

    Nintendo Game and Watch: Cult reborn as keyholders (video)

    Posted on January 18, 2010 | No Comments
    Game & Watch is the name of a series of (now) simple LCD handheld games Nintendo produced between 1980 and 1991. The small devices still enjoy cult status among hardcore retro gamers (just look at these prices on Ebay), which means it's not that big a surprise that toymaker Takara decided to come up with three new keyholders that are designed exactly like Game & Watch units.

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  • New Japanese toy: Endless chocolate bar breaker

    New Japanese toy: Endless chocolate bar breaker

    Posted on January 14, 2010 | No Comments
    Do you like the feeling you get when you break a chocolate bar in half? Do you want to experience that feeling over and over for some reason? Then you're in the target group for a new Japanese toy called Mugen Chokoreeto [JP], which (kind of) translates back to "Endless Chocolate Bar". It's the brainchild of major Japanese toymaker Bandai. It's essentially a mini toy made of plastic that looks like a small chocolate bar and that you can "break" into two parts repeatedly. You can choose between three "flavors": milk chocolate, high-milk chocolate and white chocolate. The "bars" have a case, too, and weigh 22g. The Meiji branding you see on the picture on the left is actually the result of a licensing deal Bandai made with a real Japanese confectionery company called Meiji Seika.

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  • Disgusting: The GUMMI-X toy kit is an edible insect maker

    Disgusting: The GUMMI-X toy kit is an edible insect maker

    Posted on January 13, 2010 | No Comments
    What Japanese toy maker Megahouse is offering here is truly disgusting: A toy kit that you can use to form edible insects made of juice and other liquids. The so-called GUMMI-X [JP] is geared towards teenage boys, but it has the potential to seriously freak out certain adults, too. Users will be able to create a total of four exotic insects and such that they can put into their meals. Choose between stag beetle, the Japanese rhinoceros beetle, the especially disgusting pill bug and the Procambarus clarkii, a freshwater crayfish. Other animals, a frog for example, are sold separately.

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  • Homestar Aqua: Sega Toys rolls out new planetarium for your bathroom (video)

    Homestar Aqua: Sega Toys rolls out new planetarium for your bathroom (video)

    Posted on January 8, 2010 | No Comments
    Sega Toys' series of planetarium projection systems for home use, the so-called Homestars, is getting another update. The company has announced [JP, PDF] the so-called Homestar Aqua for the Japanese market (everyone living outside this country can pre-order the Aqua here). This version is smaller and can, as the name suggests, be used in the bathroom (it's water-resistant). And it's relatively inexpensive, too.

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  • Cork USB stick and light bulb USB stick

    Cork USB stick and light bulb USB stick

    Posted on January 7, 2010 | No Comments
    I don't know what it is about Japan and USB, but Nippon just keeps on churning out USB-powered crap gadgets. Thanko is one of the Tokyo-based companies responsible for this phenomenon, the other is Greenhouse. And Greenhouse announced not one but two silly USB gadgets, memory sticks to be more exact in the last 48 hours: One is shaped like a cork [JP], the other like a mini light bulb [JP].

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  • Tube amplifier-shaped USB speaker

    Tube amplifier-shaped USB speaker

    Posted on December 31, 2009 | No Comments
    Tube or valve amplifiers are electronic amplifiers that make use of vacuum tubes to boost the power of a signal. They've been around for decades, and some audio freaks still love the sound they help to produce. And they look kind of pretty, too. Reason enough for Hanwha Japan to come up with the US-0498 [JP], a PC speaker that looks like a tube amplifier (but isn't one).

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  • Thanko sells USB-powered “Hot Cat Gloves”

    Thanko sells USB-powered “Hot Cat Gloves”

    Posted on December 28, 2009 | No Comments
    Back in August, I blogged about Thanko's Catgirl Earphones, which were shaped like cat ears. And today, the notorious Tokyo-based USB gadget maker started selling the so-called Hot Cat Gloves [JP]. A big day for the Cosplay crowd, especially those with a penchant for dressing up as a catgirl. These things may appear totally silly, but Thanko says that the Catgirl Earphones from the summer are still their No. 1 selling item. And the company has to make money to keep their three (!) brick-and-mortar stores in Tokyo going somehow.

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  • Japan gets another set of those “Crazy Earphones”

    Japan gets another set of those “Crazy Earphones”

    Posted on December 28, 2009 | No Comments
    Do you remember the so-called Crazy Earphones Tokyo-based gadget maker Solid Alliance released back in October? Apparently the silly things sold well, otherwise the company probably wouldn't have updated [JP] the series, which consisted of sushi, bananas, cat paws and bolts.

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  • HA-FX700: JVC’s wooden (and pricey) earphones

    HA-FX700: JVC’s wooden (and pricey) earphones

    Posted on December 24, 2009 | No Comments
    About a year ago, JVC started selling headphones with wooden housing in Japan, claiming the superior sound quality they bring justify the high price ($730). And today the company announced the HA-FX700 [JP], earphones partly made of wood. And we have the same things coming with it again: JVC promising high sound quality and a relatively high price.

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  • PyramidTalk: Seiko updates their cult clocks from the 1980s

    PyramidTalk: Seiko updates their cult clocks from the 1980s

    Posted on December 23, 2009 | No Comments
    Some of the older CrunchGear readers will surely remember the Pyramidtalk, a clock that verbally announced the time and other information. Seiko started selling the clock in 1984, and it turned out to be a big worldwide hit, with sales ballooning to 200,000 units per year at its peak. And now, just in time for Christmas, consumers (in Japan, at least) can lay their hands on an updated version [JP].

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  • GR DIGITAL III × STUSSY: Ricoh unveils limited edition point-and-shoot camera

    GR DIGITAL III × STUSSY: Ricoh unveils limited edition point-and-shoot camera

    Posted on December 21, 2009 | No Comments
    It's Stussy's 30th birthday next year, and for some strange reason the fashion company collaborated with Japanese electronics maker Ricoh to celebrate the occasion in the form of a Stussy-branded digital camera [JP]. Technically, Ricoh didn't change anything in the GR DIGITAL III the Stussy camera is based on (and which was released in August this year), meaning the new exterior design will most likely attract hardcore Stussy fans or camera collectors only.

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  • Lockface: USB drive that uses face recognition to verify users

    Lockface: USB drive that uses face recognition to verify users

    Posted on December 16, 2009 | No Comments
    A Japanese company called Futen (they don't have a website) is selling a USB flash drive that uses face recognition technology to check the identity of users. Needless to say, the so-called Lockface only works with your computer's web cam.

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  • Itazura Bank: The cutest piggy bank you’ve ever seen (video)

    Itazura Bank: The cutest piggy bank you’ve ever seen (video)

    Posted on December 11, 2009 | No Comments
    Japan is the country of piggy banks. Most of them either cute, weird or both, and the newest model, the Itazura Bank [JP], clearly falls in the first category. This thing is just adorable. Here's how it works: You place a coin on the fish bone-shaped button on the top of the piggy bank, which alarms the small kitty that lives inside the savings box. It meows, opens the lid with its head, reaches out its paw, grabs the coin and moves back into the box with another meow.

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  • Exemode SQ28m: Cute mini designer digital camera (video)

    Exemode SQ28m: Cute mini designer digital camera (video)

    Posted on December 9, 2009 | No Comments
    Japanese camera maker Exemode has developed the SQ28m [JP, the site is currently down], a mini digital camera that's quite nice design-wise. The device is sized at just 53×23×19mm, weighs21g, can be used with your key chain and is available in red or blue. The SQ28m features 64MB internal SDRAM, but there's also a microSD slot that you can feed with 2GB cards. It sports a 1/2.7" 195MP CMOS sensor that lets you shoot JPEGs in 1,280x1,200 and video as Motion JPEG or AVI in 320×240 resolution and at 8fps. You can transfer all material you shot to your computer via USB 1.1.

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