Hasta La Gadget!

I like to think that I’m pretty plugged into retro geek culture, but I have to hand it to the guys over at You Found a Secret Area! for turning up something I’ve not seen before – a series of Atari 2600-themed cars from Hot Wheels. Oh, and you can still buy them!

The 1/64th scale die-cast vehicle series is packaged on cards that look like classic Atari 2600 games, including Breakout, Centipede, Pong, Missile Command, and Tempest. There’s even an Atari 2600 party bus (aka Urban Assault Vehicle) for good measure. I’m not sure if the vehicles really make much sense, but they’re still an awesome bit of swag for any collector of Atari 2600 memorabilia. My personal favorite has to be the Centipede monster machine – it totally reminds me of the 1970s with its funny car styling and giant exhaust headers.

Here are a bunch of detailed video shots of each vehicle, courtesy of Hot Wheels Nation:

You can find them over on Amazon for $9.99(USD) each. But you’d better move fast before they all become as hard to find as a copy of Air Raid.

I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us…

This Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man is not here to demolish your city – in fact he’s here to help you save money, so you can start rebuilding it.

This 20-inch-tall (51cm) Stay-Puft piggy bank isn’t quite as tall as the one in Ghostbusters, but it is big enough to hold plenty of loose change and to stop around on your model railroad set. It’s actually not the first Stay-Puft bank ever made, but it’s substantially taller than the previous model, and when you’re dealing with marshmallow men, bigger is always better.

The Stay-Puft piggy bank is coming from Japan’s Blister Direct in May 2013, and will sell for ¥ 9,800 (~$119 USD). So start filling your current piggy bank now, so you can order this awesome new one to replace it with.

Confession bear time: I’ve never played any Elder Scrolls game, mostly because I don’t enjoy open world games. Which means I don’t know how unusual the weapons in the series can get. Maybe there’s one made from balloons or whatever balloons are called in the games. But I like the design of the Keening dagger. And by that I mean I like this replica.

This replica was made by Bill Doran, who is not a replica Dwemer but a real artisan who is good at making props and costumes. Elder Scrolls fans know that the Keening first appeared in Morrowind, but Doran used its appearance in Skyrim as his guide. The hilt is made of plastic resin with bronze powder, while the crystalline blade – I call it the Heisenberg – was made from “Tap Plastic’s Clear-Lite resin with some green and blue transparent tint added.”

Doran said he the replica will be auctioned off at a Child’s Play event today, although I think that’s exactly what an evil High Priest would say if he’s messing with… with evil magics and stuff. I’ve run out of Elder Scrolls references. Go on, fast travel to Doran’s blog for more pictures and details on the process.

[via Punished Props via Reddit]

We have laughed more than a few times at the oddball product from NeuroSky called the Necomimi brainwave cat ears. The ears are designed to move back and forth depending on your mood based on reading your brain waves. Out of the box, the head-worn system comes with a large pair of white ears.

If you like the idea of wearing these odd cat ears, you might appreciate having some different ear styles to wear. NeuroSky is now showing off accessories to go along with the brainwave cat ears. Accessories include four different ear tips that can replace the default snowy white units.

The accessories include minky brown ears, leopard ears, obsidian black ears, and devil’s horns that would have been perfect for Halloween. There’s always next year, I suppose. Each accessory ear pack costs $19.95 (USD) over at the Necomimi shop.

In the old days, people can tell what someone is feeling by their facial expressions or by using special mouth sounds like “I’m sad. I don’t have anyone to talk to, which makes it sadder that I’m talking right now.” But apparently people these days are lying cowards who don’t want to express what they really feel. So now we have this.

The device is called the Tailly. It was invented by Shota Ishiwatari, the same man who came up with the brain-controlled cat ears and tails. The Tailly on the other hand looks at the wearer’s heart rate.

It’s a testament to how long I’ve been writing for Technabob that it’s the boring outfits of the people in the video that I find to be really weird and not the fake tails they’re wearing. Pledge at least £60 (~$96 USD) Kickstarter page to reserve your own Tailly. I’ll jump on the bandwagon when they come up with something that lets me run as fast as a cheetah.