Hasta La Gadget!

Via Naked Tokyo

Glasses brand Jin’s Global Standard has teamed up with 11 top Japanese architects to create a series of clever, and certainly “eye-catching,” frames. This collaboration is the first in Jin’s new “Notable Creators” series.

Participating architects include Jun Aoki, who offers these reading glasses that fit into macaroon shaped cases (below left) and Yuko Nagayama, who created the “Sun Grass” (below right). Both of these architects have coincidentally produced a few of the local Louis Vuitton boutiques; Aoki designed the ones in Omotesando, Roppongi, and Ginza, while Nagayama did the one in Kyoto’s Daimaru department store.

We also liked these literal wrap-around glasses from Kumiko Inui (left) and the hand-drawn “Doodle” frames (right) from Sou Fujimoto.

The frames themselves are surprisingly affordable, at ¥12,990 a pair (about $135). While celebrity “designed” products abound, the Notable Creators series stands out for actually choosing celebrities who are famous for their design skills. On that note, it is important to point out that in Japan, particularly in artsy-intellectual circles where quirky glasses would be accepted (if not expected), successful architects do achieve celebrity status.

Architecture and fashion have been crossing paths for a while now, as documented in the well-traveled international exhibition Skin+Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2006. Jin’s Global Standard is an example of an accessible brand distilling this trend for the retail market.

Once again, we made it out to the Tokyo Toy Show for its 2009 incarnation (see our coverage of 2007 and 2008) and weren’t disappointed. A bit different than what we expected, but economics and other factors are changing the market a bit perhaps. Some old favorites, some new surprises, but still a fun toy show with lots to see.

What’s clear is that there’s still a huge production trend of toys that are used for cooking real food. We used to call those “appliances” back in the day, but if you make them pink, small, and plastic enough they pass as toys apparently.

Below is this year’s video round-up, with details below in the product descriptions:

Instead of just throwing in a bunch of pics like we usually do, or making separate blog entries for each product, we’ve decided to put them all together in this one big piece. Not only will you find details of the best toys from this year, but Japan Trend Shop has informed us that they’re going to be offering pre-orders for many of them. We’ll drop in the links as JTS has them ready to go. Enjoy!

I suppose it can also be a timer for real Cup Noodles, but the 3 Minute Cup Noodle Game gives you three minutes to perfectly assemble one of a variety of flavors of noodle before absolutely exploding it all into bits again.

One of our favorites. You can set up a mini golf course inside your house with Anywhere Family Golf, and play a round with the plastic golfer that looks suspiciously like teen golfing sensation Ryo Ishikawa. It even has a putter included to switch up for your short game!

We love bath goods from Japan, and if the Awa Awa Lan bubble maker can make this many bubbles for us everyday, consider us sold.

Crunchgear covered these Pellermodels pretty well here. Basically, you can print out your own figure with the faces of real people, allowing you to play dolls like Lord Helmet and create your fantasy date with, well, whoever.

Bowlingual has been around for a long time, but this new Bowlingual Voice version actually translates your dogs barks into human words and speaks them to you. No word yet on the extent of a dog’s vocabulary, but we can imagine that Japanese dogs like to talk about food alot.

These seem to be an eco toy of some kind called Cap heads. We just think they look cool.

This is another favorite. Put a coin in the dish of the Choken Bako and the dog goes wild, lapping it up until it disappears into the internal coin bank. The action is really funny to watch and is in the video above and on the JTS product page.

Clockman may not be so relevant to cultures that aren’t superstitious about blood types, but the interesting marketing angle is that they’re ties into these hugely popular blood type books we talked about here.

Eco Otome solves the problem of Japanese women who want some noise to cover up their time powdering their nose. Now, instead of flushing the toilet before going, the tiny Eco Otome makes the toilet sound for you!

Like their friend Pekoppa, Hanappa flowers are meant to be talked to, and will move along to communicate with your sentiments. Like good little Japanese flowers, they bow ever so slightly in agreement, no matter what you say. I wonder what they’re really thinking…

Soon to be released for the Homestar Extra home planetarium, these new discs are a very cool change from the usual stars.

Now that there are already a million other toys out there to help us bake different foods, the Kururin Mochi Maker eliminates the need for the gigantic wooden mallet we all imagine that mochi is actually made with.

This is one of our favorites! We love toy cameras, but the Kurorin Shot is a digital camera that lets you take all kinds of pictures with toy effects, but with the ease of digital. Quite fun to play with I might add.

No idea how this works, but the Magic Pet is low-priced, lives in old PET bottles, and does little tricks (as seen in the video).

From Tomiya, this DIY Mechanical Fish likes to swim in the water, both on the surface and under.

We LOVE Maywa Denki, the brains behind the Bacarobo competition and tons of fun, silly, and creative inventions. The Otamatone is a bit like a theremin that needs touch, and plays electronic notes. Nice design too.

Sukasama Star Japan records you saying one thing, plays it for you backwards, and then lets you attempt to do the reverse. It’s pretty funny hearing the sounds in words that you don’t realize are there (see the video for what I mean).

If you’ve never been to a kaiten sushi revolving restaurant, you might as well bring the experience home. Why go out when you can race the Sushi Train Restaurant around the table, delivering food to your family and friends? Available for pre-order here.

After talking about it here, we finally got a chance to see the Uchiage Hanabi in action, and it’s pretty amazing. We were skeptical at first, but the fireworks look pretty good in the dark. Not like the real thing of course, but still a great effect.

If you like to catch your fake food as it bounces all over your grill, the Yakiniku King is for you.

Well, that’s it for now. We’ll continue to update this piece as more product information comes in, and we have more news about where to buy these great items.

We’ve documented several examples of the cooking-meets-family entertainment product trend propelled by toy makers like Bandai and Takara Tomy (see here and here). The products do keep coming, but they are hardly new and novel anymore. Bandai’s latest Savon à la Mode, however, takes the trend in a new direction: to the bathroom. Like the popular food preparation toys, Savon à la Mode turns a chore into a game, and in this case the task is hand washing.

Released on June 27th, this brightly colored set includes all the tools and material necessary for kids to make their own “aroma soap” in attractive fruit or dessert shapes. The kit is part of Bandai’s “Hobby Girls” collection, which includes sets for other crafty projects like weaving wristbands and studding accessories with rhinestones. The marketing cleverly combines this DIY spirit with an appeal to precocious little princesses who covet grown-up looking bathroom products. And might those covetable bathroom products be these ones we blogged about ages ago?

Savon à la Mode is also a neat way to promote hygiene for kids, which is attractive for parents too. As for the French title, which certainly gives a fashionable slant to the product, the word “savon” (pronounced “shabon”) plus the Japanese word “tama” (“ball”) means “soap bubble” in Japanese. Savon à la Mode retails for ¥3,990; Bandai plans to sell 100,000 items by the end of March 2010.

Creative QR code innovators SET Japan, fresh off of their buzzworthy Louis Vuitton / Murakami QR code promotion, have now released a new edition for Marc Jacobs.

You can only access the new Marc Jacobs mobile site from a Japanese phone after scanning the code, but the code itself is worth it on its own. Quite amazing how nicely they can be designed while still remaining incredibly functional.