Hasta La Gadget!

Bill Nye’s paper recycling factory toy (right) looks like a promising way to teach kids environmental friendliness while they’re ripe and impressionable. The kit includes an assortment of colorful, plastic tools to mash, dye, hydrate and mold old paper into new stuff like notebooks and post cards. Potentially gives the word "greenwashing" new meaning, doesn’t it?

Product Page [via Boing Boing Gadgets] 

Photo: Discover This

The piggy bank has certainly gotten a makeover recently and now Wiz Inc. offers a new take on the traditional calculator, the Consolation Money Calculator. What looks like a standard desktop calculator (except with an unusually large screen) actually has two modes, one for normal functions and one for “consolation calculation,” to determine the net worth of any emotional anguish incurred on account of another.

It works like this: first enter your profile information, choose the perpetrator of your anguish (from a list of option such as “boss,” or “boyfriend/girlfriend”) and the origin, fill in a few more details particular to your previous selections and hit the “mental damage” button to calculate your results. Since it really is just for fun, the “mental damage” equates to responses such as “beer” or “dinner” displayed in cute images on the liquid crystal screen.

The Consolation Money Calculator debuts on January 24th for ¥2,415. Also in stores on that day from Wiz Co.’s Koyoi Ani line (for ¥1,029) is the “Successive Janken” key chain game. The popularity of janken, or rock, paper, scissors, knows no boundaries in Japan and this game allows for unlimited practice against a digital opponent. Play involves choosing one of three buttons (rock, paper, or scissors) on the bottom of the “scissor hand” shaped game.

The appeal is based on the theory that if the entire world’s population of 6,600,000,000 were to engage in a giant tournament of janken, a player need only win 33 times consecutively to claim the world title (according to the press release). As players rack up consecutive wins, the standby screen updates their world rank, leading to the ultimate goal of global supremacy. Consider it “mugen” (endless) janken, but with a target (however unrealistic) in sight.

Although, keeping in mind how long some school kids spend on the trains in their morning commute, Successive Janken might just turn out a few top ranked players.