From the company that brought you home-karaoke and the electronic dog bark translator comes Cubee, a pyramid scheme of six block-shaped animals that moo, quack, or tweet out three different songs apiece. But when you stack them, the top dog (or whatever) becomes the lead singer, and the rest just back him up.
In Japanese, their names are Bowbi (dog), Nyanbi (cat), Pyobi (chick), Guabi (duck), Boobi (pig, I'm not kidding), and Kalbi (the cow, which you may recognize from the menu at a Korean BBQ.)
Thye're super cute in that play-with-it-in-the-store way, but I'm guessing that in a few days (two weeks, tops) Cubee's super-annoying nature will be revealed, and they'll be just one more set of noisemaking plastic toys that'll have you asking, why'd we-ever-buy-these-damn-things?? Of course, if you collect them for free by eating at Mister Donuts in Shinjuku every day for six weeks, you'll love them forever. But then you'll be as big as a sumo wrestler.
Cubee Singing Animal Blocks [takara-usa, via Gizmodo. Thanks to DT reader/animal lover Kaz]
Gizmodo also has a link to the Japanese commercials for Cubee
Not related, but weirder: Commercials for Kewpie, a Japanese brand of mayonnaise [via WMMNA]
If anyone finds a good place in the US to buy these, let me know...
And if they get too annoying, they can always be "accidentally" left at grandma's house.
ps - I just want to point out that I'm not an animal lover in the way that some zookeepers supposedly are.
I, for one, am glad you pointed this out.
Neither am I.
But where is the gay-pen-oopi singing penguin block? You know, that one that back-ups all of Streisands hits.
I was thinking of going back to your post about the Laugh & Learn Learning home to make this post but since you returned to the realm of annoying toys I thought I should mention it here.
My parents decided to Laugh & Learn our little family by sending our son the Laugh & Learn Learning Puppy.
This little brown puppy with colorful paws and ears sings about its ears and paws (calling them hands and feet which truly confuses my German wife). It is quite annoying and fortunately our son only pays attention to it when we feed him from a spoon.
I have a real love/hate relationship with my parents.