Solar Powered Toys

A new fad is making waves: toys that run on solar energy and don’t need batteries.

The Flip Flap plant will not grow without sunlight

Experts say it is the energy source of the future. It’s green energy, renewable, and clean. And it’s obtained directly from the sun. Solar energy is not just used for heating; it’s also used to run certain devices.

Installing solar panelsfor domestic use is becoming more and more commonplace and in countries such as Japan more and more devices are now designed to run on this type of energy.

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on 02 Jan 2009 by Marta Reig in Thingamabobs, Curiosities and Inventions	Comments Send this to a friend

NYC on the palm of your hand

Build your own mini replica of the skyscrapers city out of a paper template

How long it took them to build NYC?

Fans and enthusiasts of Woody Allen’s movies, architecture lovers, and handicrafts experts, they will all have a big time with this enjoyable puzzle hobby.

It is all about building Manhattan out of a paper sheet. We’ve already talked about the ReadyMech, figure toys which come folded as a PDF document for you to print, cut and fold with your own hands so that they take shape.

To get your own mini replica of the Big Apple you’ll need to follow the same procedure.

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on 30 Dec 2008 by Marta Reig in Thingamabobs, Curiosities and Inventions	Comments Send this to a friend

Portable Fish Bowl

Take your goldfish for a walk

Take your goldfish for a walk. He would do the same for you

Your poor little goldfish must be fed up of watching the same scenario day after day. Why don’t you get hold of a portable fish bowl and you take him for a walk? Imagine being all day long trapped inside a bubble and you will get close to know how boring it could be your poor goldfish world.

You can use it to carry your goldfish around and take him on holidays with you and take him to your friend’s if being apart from him even for a little while is so hard for you.

This portable fish bowl is made of methacrylate, a material knock-resistant, designed by Israel designer Michal Shabtiall.

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on 29 Dec 2008 by Marta Reig in Thingamabobs, Curiosities and Inventions	Comments Send this to a friend

The Remote Control Is Mine!

Holding the remote control is like holding power, that’s so at least at home. We’ve all fought for holding it at hand, it’s nearly some object of desire. Here we pay a well deserved tribute to it selecting some of the most curious ones.

Channel surfing just by pulling the trigger

Nikola Tesla developed the first remote control back in 1893, but it was not until mid 20th century that this invention became popular and started to be used in households all over the world. The remote control revolutionized the lazy audience’s world with its remote technology: getting up the sofa was no longer an issue to zap and flick channels (although there were not many channel options back then.)

It becoming popular meant the end of family quarrels in front of the TV fighting to decide who would be the one getting up to flick channel.

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on 26 Dec 2008 by Marta Reig in Thingamabobs, Curiosities and Inventions	Comments Send this to a friend

Delicious Non-Fattening Products

An inflatable toast, a giant ice-cream, a soft doughnut... All these delicious food itmes are useful products really. Can you guess what they are good for?

They’re not edible, what are they good for?

February 2008, sales and ebay bids for a somehow forgotten product suddenly start rocketing: the hamburger phone. Why would this phone –left behind for years and years since its golden years in the 80’s– be all the rage again? The answer is in the cinema: a movie came to its rescue putting it on the ears of the main character – Juno.

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on 24 Dec 2008 by Marta Reig in Thingamabobs, Curiosities and Inventions	Comments Send this to a friend

Do You Poken?

Keyring-friendly USB devices with giant toy hands which when clinking them, they exchange data and social networking info. They are the modern world visiting cards.

With your Poken Panda no need for visiting/business cards anymore

Poken looks like some animal-shaped USB memory stick, but they can actually contain loads of useful information and work in a simply and smart manner.

Take your Poken always with you and, whenever you need to exchange personal or networking info with friends, all you need to do is ‘high five’ it with your friend’s, and each time you successfully ‘Poken’ a new friend, a green light glows on your cute little critter’s hand.

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on 23 Dec 2008 by Marta Reig in Thingamabobs, Curiosities and Inventions	Comments Send this to a friend

Christmas in Japan

Japanese Christmas is quite of a commercial hype. Christmas Eve is synonym for "romantic night" amongst young couples, but the truth is that not as many people celebrate that time together.

Christmas decorations in Tokyo, December 2008

How is Christmas in Japan?
By Christmas time, Japanese cities and towns light up and shine full of colourful lights (even more than usual) and shops and stores make a fortune in this shopping paradise. Local shops and big stores put their Christmas full dresses on, adopting the typical western-style seasonal look; Christmas trees, garlands, gifts, etc... Christmas in Japan is quite of a commercial hype really.

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on 22 Dec 2008 by Ayumi Nakai in CurioJapan	Comments Send this to a friend

Customize your iPod

Choose the accessory your iPod needs

Where is my iPod?

From home to work, from work to the subway, from the subway to the supermarket... You barely come off your iPod only when having a shower? Are you an iPod-aholic loving your music player above any other thing, and when the batteries run out you feel like dying? You’ve chosen a flashy colour thinking that no one else would have the same, but two years later even your little nephew’s got one!...

It’s just normal, the iPod went from being an object of desire to become the most popular and best selling music player in the world.

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on 18 Dec 2008 by Marta Reig in Thingamabobs, Curiosities and Inventions	Comments Send this to a friend

Life-Sized Mario Bros

An artist has recreated the setting where Mario Bros, one of the best-selling videogames of all times, takes place.

Landscape is an interactive room

In 1983, Nintendo developed Mario Bros, a videogame staring the plumbers Luigi and Mario, two brothers who work in and around the sewers of New York. If you’re part of the Tetris generation, that is to say, if you’re in your 30’s, you’ve probably played this game a million times either on one of those huge machines in an arcade or, if you were really lucky, on that oh-so-cool dirty-grey Game Boy.

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on 17 Dec 2008 by Marta Reig in Thingamabobs, Curiosities and Inventions	Comments Send this to a friend

Rubik Mania

So many objects imitate the mythical cube’s design, that you could spend an entire day surrounded by Rubik products.

Start the day off solving problems

In 1974, Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernö Rubik invented a cubed-shaped mechanical puzzle with different colored sides: the mythical Rubik’s Cube. A year later he got a patent on it and, ever since, this magical cube has kept growing and spreading throughout the world.

Who’s never gotten their hands on one? We’ve all tried to solve it, almost invariably without success and trying to cheat by peeling off the square stickers in order to falsely get one monochromatic side.

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