Hasta La Gadget!

The Trip is a crazy hybrid rolling-suitcase which manages to be both practical and weird in equal measure. It carries your luggage, of course, and offers a very useful “kangaroo” pocket on the front, a flap which zips open to allow fast access to a laptop, books, cellphone or anything else you squeeze in.

It also turns int a chair: The wheels hinge back on the end of stalks and the hard, padded top-section slides forward to make a bigger area for your butt. Think of R2D2 leaning back into his roll-along position and you’ve got the idea.

Then it gets odd. The more expensive of the two trips has a battery and speakers. This is so you can listen to music in your hotel room or take the suitcase along on a picnic. I’m serious. Check this out, from the email pitch:

Pick a sunny day, bring a good wine and some tasty food and put on your favorite tunes for a perfect afternoon! Even if your iPhone or BlackBerry runs out of power, you can charge it through the TRIP.

That charging part is useful, but why would you want to further shrink the space inside a rolling case with batteries and speakers? I have no love for wheelie-cases, preferring a lighter, more capacious backpack, so perhaps I am biased, but even for the lazy traveler it seems foolish to shrink you load-bay like this.

If you do fancy a case/seat/speaker, and don’t mind plugging your travel-bag into a USB port once in a while, then you can have the Trip Sound for €650 ($850), or opt for the quieter Trip for €595 ($780). Oh, and hit “mute” before you go to the site. It has, unforgivably, auto-playing music.

Trip product page [Travelteq. Thanks, Titia!]