Chindōgu

[davidn]

When I was in school, there was a fantastic sort of science programme on CBBC called "It'll Never Work" that showcased inventions of varying degrees of plausibility from around the world, or the history of existing ones. Like all British TV that was made before I discovered the concept of nostalgia, it was naturally fantastic, but the parts that most stuck in my mind were mocked-up adverts for products from "Chindogu - the useless inventions company".

It was only recently that I discovered that Chindogu (or more correctly, Chindōgu) still existed, and is a real philosophy in Japan (though then again, what isn't) meaning something along the lines of "odd tool". The largest site I can find about about them is unfortunately a Flash one, but I promise that it has the best examples (I really like the 10-in-1 Super Gardening Tool that's reminiscent of a colossal Swiss army knife). The idea of this art is difficult to sum up, but it's to do with solving an everyday problem in a way that first appears to be a work of genius but quickly becomes madly impractical. But it sometimes seems a shame that part of the idea of Chindogu is that the ideas can't go on to be sold, because there are a lot of examples on the site that you really want to work - Whitney was particularly impressed with the stick of butter that could be directly applied to toast via a Pritt-Stick style tube.

I also remember that programme running its own competition for viewer-submitted Chindogus (Chindogii? Chindogae?), the eventual winner being a device for painting high walls that amounted to being a pot of paint attached to a pogo stick. It's this kind of creativity that they really admire.

Comments

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

Now I want butter pritt stick.


If only Science could help us.

[bonappetite.livejournal.com]

I swear that my family once had a butter pritt stick. It's marketed for use on corn on the cob and you buy basically a large rectangular prism made of plastic with a plastic pushing thing and stick the butter inside. Here it is http://www.sgros.com/butter.html. you just need to make it so the end isn't curved for corn on the cob, but flat for toast.

[jenny0.livejournal.com]

We basically did this by only partially unwrapping the butter from its paper. I wish we'd known there was a more high-tech (and presumably less buttery-fingers) way!