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Creepy phone charger looks like it will strangle you in the night

We can assure you we'll never buy this $6,000 phone charger, which resembles an umbilical cord and pulsates while plugged in.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read

Nope nope nope nope nope nope. No matter how attached I may feel to my cell phone, this creepy charger is never, ever entering my home.

For one thing, it costs more than $6,000 (about £4,600, AU$7,800) on Etsy, where Japanese artist Mio Izawa is selling it. But really, you could pay me $6,000 and I wouldn't -- well, I might take the $6,000, but then I'd have to find a fireproof safe with triple locks and double-wrapped chains to put the thing in, because that's the only way I'd be convinced it's not coming to life to strangle me in the night.

Look at it! It's meant to look like an umbilical cord is wrapping the charging cord, and then there's a flesh-like monster mouth thing sucking on your phone. And it moves! It kind of breathes in and out, pulsating and squeezing while it consumes your soul charges your phone. And it makes a slurping sound! I'm pretty sure it's saying "You'll float too!" in Japanese.

David Cronenberg fans might love this. All I can think of is "The Blob," and how that poor old guy got it stuck on his arm, and then it ate him before Steve McQueen could get anyone to believe it was even a threat. Learn from the King of Cool.

The YouTube video has been around for six years, and people have been clamoring to buy it ever since. Now, thanks to Etsy, you can. Who are you people? All I can say is, even if this were the only phone charger in the world, I would attempt to charge my phone with my mouth a la Uncle Fester on "The Addams Family" before I would give this a try.

(Via Boing Boing)