It’s that time of the year when stores lure us to part with our disposable income and be in possession of shiny new gadgets and various knickknacks.
Below, we compile a list of some of our favourite stuff—both new and old—that have piqued our interest and sent us pining with lust. They’re perfect for giving as gifts, or keeping for yourself (We won’t judge).
Rest assured this isn’t a sponsored post—just a simple gift guide slash intense wishlist. Enjoy!
Kranium Cardboard Bicycle Helmet
Tough it out with cardboard.
Sofas entirely made out of corrugated cardboard are cute, but a bike helmet featuring the same sturdy material is genius. Enter the Kranium cardboard helmet, whose inspiration is the humble woody woodpecker with its penchant for tough knocks on the head. The helmet’s unique design uses a lattice of cardboard proudly enclosed in a see-through shell, so you can let everyone know what you’re rocking. And this thing is tough, withstanding up to three impacts before getting disposed of, where ordinary helmets take only one. Never underestimate cardboard again.
Look Ma, I’m organized!
The concept is simple and elegant: an organizer made of interwoven elastics, for securing your favourite things—your iPod, your digital camera, thumb drives, earbuds, gadget cables, pens and markers in assorted colors, various other school supplies, and whatnot. Grid-It is endlessly configurable and will happily welcome anything you tuck in it. The all-black lattice of elastic bands is sleek and anonymous—making it the perfect background for your precious hodgepodge of things.
Never kidnap a fish from the seas again.
There are some things that should never ever be made out of plastic. Flowers and coffee mugs for instance. But plastic battery-powered robot fishes for the aquarium? Count us in. Enter Robo Fish from toy company Zuru. Drop it in the aquarium and it readily swims just like a real fish, convincingly enough to fool not just us humans but the real fishes as well. Actually, all aquariums should just feature robotic versions so we could all stop kidnapping fishes from their natural habitats. Didn’t Nemo teach us already?
Moleskine Hobbit Edition (ring not included)
You might have your favourite note-taking app, but nothing beats writing down your half-baked ideas and profound lines of thought on paper, complete with tell-tale erasures just like the old-fashioned way. That’s what Moleskine journals are for. We like the fact that every so often the company releases a special edition—Star Wars-themed perhaps, or Lord of the Rings-inspired, along with the classic anonymous black.
Meanwhile (by Jason Shiga)
Choices, choices, choices. A page from Meanwhile.
Our beloved Choose Your Own Adventure books get a lovely reboot with Jason Shiga’s ingeniously crafted Meanwhile, which has been around since 2010. It features the little boy Johnny whose ordinary day turns out to be one convoluted life-changing journey based on whether he chooses the chocolate or vanilla ice cream. An intriguing professor-scientist armed with a time travel machine, mind reading helmet, and the very deadly Killitron 2000, naturally gets the story going, back and forth, to and fro, until you find the single, solitary solution (out of 3,856 story possibilities). Meanwhile already has an iPad app, but the physical book, with its toughened glossy pages and meandering tubes and colored tabs, is way better. No cheating, please.
Netbooks are back!
After a rocky start involving obligatory maiden release glitches, it’s safe to say that Asus’s latest foray into netbook territory (remember netbooks?) is now stable and ready to rock. Intel’s Bay Trail powers this 10.1 inch tablet-laptop convertible, and there’s a full Windows 8.1 already installed. As if that’s not enough, a free Microsoft Home & Student 2013 is included for all the productivity you need. The display is not HD, but the IPS panel is astounding for its $399 price tag. And with up to 11 hours of battery life, really, what more can you ask for?
SodaStream Flavor Caps
DIY Soda.
SodaStream has been around for quite some time, urging us to “set the bubbles free” with their eco-friendly DIY carbonated beverages. These don’t add aluminium cans or plastic bottles to the waste stream, promote water use straight from the tap, and forgo gas-guzzling truck trips for transportation. The brand’s new Flavor Caps, diminutive flavouring capsules, are certainly out to disrupt the old monopoly of soft-drink giants.
Braven 570 for all your audio boost needs and then some.
For all the engineering marvels of our smartphones, they still can’t crank up a beat loud and decent enough. The Braven 570 Bluetooth speaker takes care of that. With its rugged faux-metal plastic casing (it comes in six colors, to fulfil your funky heart’s desire) and no-nonsense industrial design, this speaker sits nice in your room or anywhere you take it. It’s a speaker phone too, automatically pausing David Bowie so you can take that important call from Mom. One other nifty feature: should your smartphone run out of juice, the Braven 570 has some to share via USB.
Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking
Play with food the professional way.
Whether you’re a, uhm… seasoned chef or amateur foodie, it’s never too late to dabble in molecular gastronomy, that astounding branch of food science where you manipulate the physical and chemical properties of food. (Think foam forced inside eggs, liquid nitrogen as an unlikely tool, and turning all sorts of food into tiny perfect spheres.) Master the recipes to achieve that crucial balance between physics and edibility. Now you can proudly Instagram.
Blunt umbrellas. Blunt where it matters.
Windblown umbrellas—with their broken ribs and flapping canopies—are never good for our morale. Blunt’s classic umbrella is out to solve just that, in a lightweight package with a unique radial tensioning system designed to withstand harsh gusts. And true to its name, the umbrella is blunt at the tips so you don’t have to worry about eye-pokes and other mishaps.
Voltron Die-Cast Metal Action Figure
Nothing says nostalgia like Voltron.
Before the Internet made cats adorable and viral, there was already Voltron, Defender of the Universe, albeit the lion slash robotic kind—strong, heroic, and does the job. As homage to the cartoon’s 30th anniversary (Yep, thirty, good of them to remind us) Toynami issues a die-cast metal, the lions assembling into an 11-inch robot, complete with glowing eyes and that badass sword.
All together now: Tamagotchi!
The egg-shaped (tamago = egg in Japanese) virtual pet keychains just turned 17! The new tamagotchis released by Bandai still let you in charge of your of a unspecified baby creature (so many new cutesy characters to be reared now.) You still get to feed, bathe, and pamper them, play mini-games, and of course clean up after them, just like the old days. This time around though you can interact with other people’s pets just by bumping your devices together. The black and white screens are still stuck in the ‘90s, but hey, the tamagotchis were essentially meant to be a low-tech as possible.
Now, you’ll be looking forward to your next camping adventure.
When the lure of the Great Outdoors take over you, there’s just no saying no. That said, arm yourself with one of the BioLite CampStove for cosy cookouts in the wild. No need for wasteful butane fuel canisters; all you need to fire up this thing are a few random twigs and bits of wood you pick up along the camp trail. The construction is sturdy enough for most cooking needs, yet lightweight. Best of all, this clever little stove generates extra electricity to charge your tablets and phones.
The Next Day Extra Release (David Bowie)
Nothing still beats having the actual physical album.
David Bowie can do no wrong. Even when he’s lending his enigmatic persona for commercial purposes (he recently starred in a Louis Vuitton ad), he does it with style and comes out unscathed.
Released last November 4, this 3-disc box edition of The Next Day features the original 14 songs in the album plus a 10-track companion CD with 5 previously unreleased songs and 2 remixes, and a DVD featuring four music videos culled from The Next Day. (We can never get tired of watching Tilda Swinton, yet another one who does no wrong)
Uncompromised audio quality is pricey, but you’ll love it.
Ditch the dinky headphones that came free with your smartphone and treat yourself to high quality earbuds—you’ll instantly realize what you’ve been missing all along. The Shure SE425 earbuds might be a tad pricey but they make up for it with excellent audio quality (Golden Ears has glowing reviews for it: bass, dynamics, treble, resolution are all where you want them to be on the chart). Best of all, with rugged Y-junction and L-plug housings, Kevlar-reinforced wires, and a dapper case for easy storage, these buds are definitely built to last. Go ahead and be nice to yourself.
