tomy

If you're terrible at something, just turn it into a fun activity. The Japanese did that very successfully when they turned singing into karaoke. Now they're doing the same with saving money.

Jinsei Ginko ("Life Bank") from Takara Tomy A.R.T.S is a digital piggy bank that works with your iPhone. It's designed with a Japanese bank-style logo to get you serious about hoarding yen.

The plastic piggy bank can hold 200 coins of 500 yen, the highest denomination, each worth about $5.41. That makes for a whopping total of 100,000 yen ($1,083). You could buy a bathtub of ramen with that. … Read more

TOKYO--If you're in love with your iPhone, Bandai's Smartpet lets it really walk all over you.

Shown off at the 2012 International Tokyo Toy Show, which opened to the public yesterday, Smartpet turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a robotic canine companion.

The pooch can walk around (top speed: three steps per second), sit up, and wag its tail. The app shows a variety of cartoon faces on the touch screen, or whatever face you want to give it. … Read more

Here at Crave, we've covered a number of toy cameras such as the Fun Nature FDC01 and the Yashica EZ F521. Now, Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy is dishing out a similar offering, but with 3D capabilities.

The 3D Shot Cam (PDF) is styled after the FDC01. However, like the Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W3, this petite camera has two lenses coupled with 0.3-megapixel image sensors. The 3D Shot Cam churns out stereoscopic images, which require users to employ the supplied 3D viewers to view results.

The camera will cost $70 when it launches in Japan next year, … Read more

Behold the Mitsuoka Orochi. It's powered by a 3.3-liter, 230 horsepower Toyota Camry V-6; has a power-to-weight ratio somewhere between that of the Honda Civic and a Mini Cooper S; and carries the distinction of being the ugliest supercar ever built. Ever. And if you want the distinction of owning one, it'll cost you about $95,000 and the price of a plane ticket to Japan, or, for about $60, you could pick up a much smaller version that transforms into a robot.

User kenji on the Transformers enthusiast forum HK-TF has posted preview photos of the … Read more

Just when you thought Twitter had broken the limits of stupidity with products like Twoddler, which lets tots send short messages, Mattel is making sure it really does go to the dogs.

The toy giant's Puppy Tweets turns your pooch's woofs into tweets so you can keep up with its busy daily schedule of eating, sleeping, and destroying your slippers.

Available soon from Amazon for about $30, Puppy Tweets consists of a collar tag with integrated motion and sound sensors that's linked to your home computer via Wi-Fi. A USB receiver is included.

The tag will send … Read more

Japanese toymaker Tomy has released a new dog translator gadget that can turn barks into words.

Bowlingual Voice is an update to Bowlingual, first released way back in 2002. The new version speaks with a human voice from a handheld unit wirelessly linked to a microphone around the dog's collar. The original version had no voice synthesizer.

Bowlingual Voice recognizes six basic canine emotions. Tomy says it can simultaneously translate the woofs of about 50 breeds of dog into Japanese.

Not surprisingly, the dogs say things like "I love you!" and not "Stop feeding me the … Read more

Beauty...that's the easy part. Working "butt" into the podcast in multiple places, now that's simply raw talent.

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Pamper your beauty products with the B7 http://www.beautygizmo.com/pamper-your-beauty-products-with-the-b7

The iPhone fingernail problem http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/06/the-fingernail.html

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Lasers for fat http://www.allure.com/magazine/2007/08/A_Laser_For_Fat … Read more

As if incessant infomercials and volume-blasting deodorant ads aren't enough, now there's a handheld TV from Japan that will talk to us all on its own. An unholy alliance of toy giant Takara Tomy and a company called E-Revolutiona has produced a pocket TV dubbed "Segnity" that has some mysterious "talking abilities" along with its 2.7-inch QVGA screen and 1Seg TV tuner.

Akihabara News speculates that it will say something like "Are you leaving already?" when it's being turned off, but that could be only the beginning. If U.S. … Read more