It Came from Japan - Thanko

There's a lot to love about Japan: Godzilla, Gatchaman, really big robots duking it out, really big monsters duking it out, and perfectly sized food portions. Over the course of years, Japan has done a marvellous job of gauging the paranoias of society at large and repackaging them as adolescent entertainment with a not-too-slight dose of smut thrown in for good measure.

What then should we make of Thanko? If you're not familiar with the company, their catalog of products rest upon a fascination with the USB port that more than borders on sexual; it's a downright fetish.

Clock a few of these gems.

First up is the Visomate—a device that goes "Pee! Pee!" all over your face whenever your posture slips and your glazzballs stray too close to the monitor. You could probably sell that to the Germans just on the porn factor alone.

Next in line is a device tailored especially for the needs of a certain Cubana Gringa. The USB ass cooler seeks to, well, cool one's ass through the magic of the USB port.

I'm hardly short on for a bit of fleshiness hanging off my lower spine, and when you consider the rampant miasmas that emerge from bowels of my being, I for one would be the first in line to give one of these devices a spin. I'd probably fork over double if it came with a sachet of baking powder to neutralise my noxious anal fumes. The issue here for all of us with some junk in the trunk is that all that junk tends to hold a lot of energy. Screw directing a fan to the face on a hot day, it's the tush that demands all the attention. Maybe the eggheads at Thanko aren't as insane as they seem.

Rounding out the trio is perhaps my favourite of all Thanko products: the USB ashtray. Extended, four-days-without-a-break sessions of World of Warcraft demand the consumption of ridiculous numbers of ciggies, or so I'm told—I'm neither a World of Warcraft play nor a smoker—and that's where this nifty device comes into play. It plugs into your USB port, sucks in your cancer-ridden smoke and emits slightly less cancer-ridden smoke. Genius. It might be worth becoming a dirt stick addict just to justify owning one of these things.

To be honest what I really want, and it's not made by Thanko (for shame!), is the Robotech Sex Thruster. Slap the name "Robotech" onto anything and there's a good chance that the nerd inside me will be drawn to the product like a cat to a fresh litter box.


Yeah, bolt that thing to the table top, get your lube tube in hand and slam the throttle forward. Apparently flesh is now obsolete in Japan.