Hasta La Gadget!

We just love interesting collaborations. “Adorable” character Hello Kitty and her owner Sanrio have teamed up with Swarovski to produce a mobile music player decorated with three hundred crystals.

In fact, this is not the first time that Hello Kitty has been decorated with Swarovski crystals and she has got together with many other designer brands before, including Victoria Couture. If this product generates enough buzz, it probably won’t be the last either.

Priced at 13,800 yen ($153) and limited to only two hundred units, this is an exclusive product that will surely be a must-buy for hardcore fans of the feline mascot. The makers are also saying that it can be an accessory as much as a real music player. Given that it only weighs 19g (but can hold 480 songs), you will want to clip this cat to you and take her for a walk.

Just launched, the Deco-Monster is a collaboration between au KDDI and Casio to promote the latter’s Exilim mobile.

The campaign revolves around the “dynamic photos” that the Exilim phone offers, and allowing you to use these as deco mail on your phone. Deco mail (”decoration mail”) is where users add tiny animations into their messages. Dynamic photos technology allows you to crop and insert moving images easily.

The strikingly designed official site has a dazzling array of grotesque characters (the eponymous “deco-monsters”) for you to use in your photos and mails, including sweet girl “merci”, “gomebuta” (ゴメブタ) and “GERA GERA” (ゲラゲラ). Currently number one on the download rankings is “burichan”, so I guess the cutest characters win out in the end. They have a mixture of facial and physical expressions, varying from “love” to “work”, or simply “reaction”.

With dynamic photos you can take your own motion photo and turn it into a deco mail, including removing the background from the photo. Pretty neat, huh?

We’ve previously done round-ups and reports on other avatars and deco-mail campaigns on phones in Japan. Clearly there is a trend for fun and cuteness that seems to show no signs of abating.

Ever wanted to touch pudding without getting your hands yucky?

Back in 2007 we were the first to break the news on Bandai’s PuchiPuchi (プチプチ) toy. Puchipuchi in Japanese is the sound of a little pop as well as the name for bubble wrap, so the toy basically named itself! Designed to mimic both the sound and feeling of popping little plastic bubbles, the PuchiPuchi can be carried around as a key chain for popping.

Now Epoch, a kids’ toys company, has produced the “Sound-Touch Pudding” (サウンド触感・ツンドコプリン), a toy which kids can touch on the top and get the soft feeling of pudding without the mess. But as the name suggests, this is not just a tactile experience but an oral one too – touching the “pudding” triggers a cute female voice.

It comes in four colors/”flavours”, each one with a different voice, and is aimed at kids aged six and over. On sale from November 21, priced 680 yen ($7.40).

It sounds like an oxymoron. The king of cheap, discount shopping launching its own brand? Fear not, Don Quijote is sticking to its usual weapon: bargains.

Under the brand name 情熱価格 (”passion price”), 140 products will be sold at all stores nationwide. The biggest fanfare surrounds their ultra-cheap jeans, priced at 690 yen ($7.60), sold in ten types for men and women. Other products include 398 yen ($4.38) wine. The chain is undercutting major supermarkets by between 10-30% and also cheap brands like gu, which sells jeans for the comparatively exorbitant price of 990 yen ($10.90).

(Image courtesy of milfled.seesaa.net.)

Don Quijote has big hopes for this private brand. They announced a sales target for their jeans of 200k within a year and plans to increase the number products to 300 in December, including digital TVs. In total, within two years the chains expects the brand to reach 5% (250 billion yen) of total sales.

How can Don Quijote be so cheap? Well, China is the source of a lot of their raw materials and manufacturing. Will this put Japanese consumers off the brand?

Wearing masks to prevent the spread of illness is already a common practice in Japan. So how does one go about taking extra precautions against the ominous H1N1 virus? By investing in one of this season’s varieties of super masks. In addition to the number of heavy duty “epidemic-grade” masks hitting shelves, we’ve noted a handful of other models that are looking to beat out the competition with some innovative features.

The New Mask Ame (¥200), from Pianta Inc. seeks to enhance the effects of a throat drop (ame) with an infusion of menthol. When the wearer sucks on a menthol throat drop, the exhaled vapors are circulated within the mask and reach up through the nose. The mask itself is coated with a menthol scent, and all of this combines to create a less suffocating, more pleasant experience for the wearer. Sales for the original Mask Ame, which began retailing in February, have passed the 200,000 mark.

The updated version, on sale from September 21, includes an impressive variety of 21 herbs (including lemon balm and peppermint) along with an upgraded menthol infusion. Pianto expects to sell even more of these, investing in a manufacturing run of 600,000. Despite the hype, I couldn’t find the Mask Ame at my local drug store (sold out?), but did come across other menthol, steam-enhancing models, from Minato Pharmaceuticals (2 for ¥299) and Kobayashi Pharmaceuticals (3 for ¥480), respectively.

A mild sense of claustrophobia is not the only drawback of mask-wearing. These facial accessories also pose a threat to carefully applied cosmetics. The Make-up Beauty Mask (5 for ¥630, from Kowa) offers total mouth and nose coverage but extends beyond the wearer’s face to avoid smearing. Glasses getting fogged up is another complaint, remedied in this case by the Pleasant Guard Pro (5 for ¥480, from Hakugen) in the form of a nose cushion. This strip keeps the mask firmly against one’s skin to prevent exhalation from sneaking upwards and blurring vision. These kind of masks have been around for a few years, but fit in nicely with the current more-than-just-a-mask trend.

Though when it comes to clever, however, we haven’t seen anything out do the perfect beauty (or chimpanzee) masks created by Mint Designs as part of last year’s Senseware collaboration.

The Japan Trend Shop also offers these nifty fashionable face masks.