BATTERY WEEK: The North Korean "Crane"

Batteries from behind the Iron Curtain! They're probably made with lots of really dangerous chemicals we're not allowed to use any more because of Brussels and Greenpeace, so they last for ages.



EXPLANATION: "Pack of batteries I saw for sale in North Korea (made in China, though). I still argue with my friends as to whether they're high quality or super quality."

BATTERY WEEK: Robots powered by "National Neo" and "Vinnic"

We'll start off Battery Week with these two beauties, spotted powering a couple of (ironic, toy) robots. We've had these photos for about six months, so if you were the person who sent them in we thank you for (a) your patience, and (b) your initial and unprompted sending-in-of the photos.





EXPLANATION: "I thought you might want to take a look at these batteries that I have in these here two robots I got as birthday presents. In the clear robot I got this year is a 'Vinnic Sum5 Extra Heavy Duty' battery and in the pink robot some idiot bought me last year is a 'High Quality National Neo Extra Long Life' battery."





"On this occasion the transparent robot knocked down the pink robot after a grapple. You can see from his face he is pleased."

BATTERY WEEK: Important safety notice

We are about to embark upon the second annual Idiot Toys Battery Week. Before we start, you should first read the following safety information, to familiarise yourself with battery 'best practice' and safety.



Thank you. Take a seat and begin pressing F5. The batteries will be along shortly.

DO NOT PUT ON TONGUE - RISK OF DEATH

MEGATON MAY EXPLOSE! Here's a little something for all you nine-volt fans, a squared-off and updated version of the awesome MEGATON:



Hard to believe it's not a Photoshop job. Very nice battery. It would keep a standard smoke detector powered for at least 600 years.

UPCOMING IDIOT TOYS CONTENT WARNING:
We have been saving up battery submissions for several months. Any day now the web site will become entirely about batteries again, possibly even as early as next week. We have some seriously impressive material ready, most of it in very high resolution.

Advice For Women #1

You DO NOT put our lovely new laptop on the snow. And look at the thing when you're pressing its buttons, or you'll delete half the drivers again by accident and we'll have to spend five evenings trying to fix it.



This is part of our occasional Advice For Women series, which we're hoping to spin off into a six-figure book deal.

TOMORROW:
Hold your MP3 player by the MP3 player, not by the headphone cable.

CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH WOMEN ARE ALLOWED TO USE OUR LAPTOP:

That it's not taken outside

That it's left on the table

That it's left fully-charged afterwards

That no drinks/food are consumed while using it

That no folders are looked in

That the bookmarks are not added to/changed/questioned

800 x 604

THE NET IS CLOSING IN.



From here. It's amazing how fast you can learn a foreign language when you really put your mind to it.

Sensational overnight developments

Someone mailed in 600 pixel wide versions of those photos.





Somewhere out there these pictures exists at 2594 x 1944. Not that we are in any way obsessed with touching the mouth on that one on the right.

FROM HERE:
Operation Ore HQ.

That photo again at a slightly higher resolution

Not that we've spent the last five hours feverishly searching the internet for this. The photo gets 20 pixels wider if you click on it.



Not obsessed with the blonde one in the slightest. But if you do happen to stumble across her MySpace profile while systematically looking through all 59 million female MySpace profiles for her MySpace profile, please forward the link.

FOLLOW THE TRAIL (TO JAIL):
Start here.

LG's 'Google phone' in underage holding scandal

We'd need these ones to hold their driving licenses up to the camera to prove their legal status before making any comments regarding their would/wouldn't/might let status:



Although, for a go with the blonde one, we'd probably take the risk of a jail term and having our names put on* the sex offender's register.



The brown one shouldn't really be allowed to stand in front. Clearly the photographer is an amateur. "Not you, your mate" he should say, beckoning the blonde one nearer the camera. You have to be cruel in the thing photography industry.



They're dribbling over and about to lick the LG KS10, which allows you to seek similar and/or slightly harder photographs on the internet thanks to having Google search facilities pre-loaded. SAFE SEARCH > OFF, as ever, is the first option to change.

*Re-submitted to/underlined in red pen.

A community service update on behalf of Emre and his dad

Here's a slightly bewildering and rambling email we got, to do with a rubbish bin that has a face.

Now here is a trashcan/rubbish bin you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. Luckily for me I didn't have to. He is sure to fill the comment sections with the likes of "Ohh, I bet he talks dirty" and "Rubbish update".

Sorry for overselling this little nugget, but seeing that I am a regular contributor (yes, yes I'm the one that sent you the picture of the Supernova batteries a while back) I was hoping you could somehow fit the word "Emre" into the update text. He is my little son you see (insert sobs here) and he was the one that discovered the face on the can/bin.

There are a number of ways you could do this:

"Pathetic dad tries to via proxy to become his son's hero"

"Child thing with face genius discovered"

"Bla bla bla seEM REgardless bla bla bla"

I'll leave it up to you...

Pingus

Oh by the way I promised him you would post the picture so if you don't he will die a little bit inside.

This may well be the worst update since the one about the history of the battery, but at least we have stopped a child from dying inside and going down the path we all mistakenly trod.

Gadgets with FACES #6 *NSFW*

Something about this scene looks familiar...



Got it! It's from Gang Bang Auditions Vol #9.

The Ledovskaja Fan

Always a pleasure to see this one performed.



A fitting tribute to the complex finger-hold's inventor Sonja Ledovskaja, who died at her home in the Ukraine last week, aged 41, of a heart attack. It's thought the heart attack was caused by her years as a thing holder, with ruthless coaches forcing young women to eat nothing but milk and cheese to keep their fingernails and hair shiny and strong.

Houses with FACES

We're going through one of those paranoid phases where we think everything is looking at us and laughing :(



The phase started in 1986 and is still ongoing.

Gadgets with FACES that look like PSYCHEDELIC OWLS FROM AN ALTERNATE NIGHTMARE DIMENSION THAT WANT TO PECK YOUR BRAIN OUT AS YOU SLEEP

This is likely to be a one-off feature rather than a recurring regular.



We're definitely first with this news.

Gadgets with FACES #5

This little honey looks so sweet (oh yes you do, oh yes you do-ey-do-do!) we're prepared to overlook the fact that she's called "Lifepop Groove Master" and is pink.



She has three quite nasty cold sores there, but we'd still do her in the main compartment then again in the smaller, tighter, front compartment. But no kissing. The strap is her hair, the zips a fashionable side-parting. She works in Soho as a video editor for a new media start-up, and her parents live in Poole and are into boats and property development.

"LIFEPOP GROOVEMASTER"
Here.

MATHS EXPLANATION:
This is Gadgets with FACES #5 as we mistakenly did two threes. This was thanks to the site search being rubbish and not being able to remember anything for more than two minutes any more thanks to the rise in popularity of super-strength European lagers.

Nokia N6120 Classic

The 6120 Classic "combines faster download speeds with functionality," which means it does more things online as the operators desperately try to recoup those massive 3G license fees by selling you ring tones for a fiver.

So if you want to pay £4.50 to watch a brief clip of yesterday's Sky News, this is your phone.



If they really want to make money, they should make you pay 5p each time you use your phone to see what the time is, plus another 5p to confirm that no one's sent you any text messages yet this week. The press release didn't say if it had an analogue or digital clock.

Nokia 8800 in gold (GOLD)

Incredible, class-leading clock size:



Sadly it looks like a phone your granddad bought in 1977, when he paid off his mortgage and started throwing the cash around. You know, when he went on that holiday abroad, and bought the Allegro, and that leather sofa, and got double glazing, and a new fireplace, and carpets, and an inside toilet.



But look at the size of that clock. Nokia's got the clock/phone balance right with this one. It's this generation's best clock.

A BONUS SPANDAU BALLET REFERENCE, FOR DAD:
It's not "indestructible", so you might want to take out the optional insurance for peace of mind at only £5.99 a month.

PRODUCT RECALL NOTICE: Samsung Demonstration Humanoid SA-01/02 discovered to be defective

Samsung has recalled all 7,800 of its shipped Demonstration Humanoids, citing trouble with product recognition sensors:



Pictured here is the Samsung Demonstration Humanoid SA-02 - with additional third hand for enhanced product display. It has malfunctioned and mistaken a banana for a telephone. If it mistook the arm of a small child for a telephone the results could be fatal. This embarrassing failure will cost Samsung millions.

EMERGENCY IMAGE REQUEST

That amazing Japanese bread web site features the following piece of stock photography:



We MUST HAVE this photograph!



She REALLY LOVES BREAD!

It is by far the greatest piece of photography in the world. We must have it, or a close approximation of it. If you have access to a woman and some bread, please recreate it and send it in.

Panasonic Breadphone spotted in Japan

Panasonic, in association with Yamazakipan bakeries, has revealed the world's first bread-based telephone.

Technical details are scarce at the moment, but it would appear to come with a 6"x6" screen and is based on old white bread rather than the growing-in-popularity new granary format. It's available in Summer Rye (white), and will come in Standard (16 slices) and Family (32 slices).



The sender of this photograph suggested making the joke that young thing-holders are started out on soft things like bread. It's a good angle and better than our rubbish "Breadphone" idea, but we can't go using someone else's angle. So it's a Breadphone.

If you have any better 'angles' for using this photograph, whack them in the Comments bit and we'll do them.

Taping scandal rocks Shanghai Future ExpoWorld 2007

This amazing arm-hold looked too good to be true - and an examination of photographic evidence after the event proved it was a fraud. The lengths people will go to.



Good to see the Samsung Demonstration Humanoid out in the wild, though.

Nokia 5700 - innovating lifestyle photography

The Nokia 5700 lifestyle photography has been Photoshopped onto the screen of the actual phone. This is the sort of genius innovation that has kept Nokia at the top of the phone/lifestyle photography scene for a decade.



Those people aren't even holding a phone. That's because Nokia KNEW the photo would be put on a phone screen! Nokia is clearly always thinking one step ahead, like we do when we buy enough milk to last for a week so we don't have to go out in the evenings.



Look at how much fun those girls are having. If you buy this phone you will have two days of minor/slight fun looking at all the new things it can do, then you will put it in your pocket until you need to know what the time is.



It's the same photo. The phone is also called the Nokia 5700 "XpressMusic" :(



Rubbish headphones. Looks like it's been designed in association with the experts at Fisher Price. 4/10.



Here they are in amazingly high resolution, for ironic desktop purposes, or for printing out and showing to people so it looks like you have pretty young friends from a variety of ethnic groups who go out instead of only bald men friends and old women friends who stay in building new Warcraft characters.

NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH:

The NGC 5700 celestial object

The Trimble 5700 GPS system

The Liebherr WK5700 Wine Storage Cabinet

The Liebherr WK5700 Wine Storage Cabinet. 5700 brings up lots of good Google results. Give it a go for half an hour.

Women who lie to their parents about what they do

"I'm doing some modeling, mum. Yes, I've got some work with Samsung. Yes, it pays quite well. Yes, it is fun. Yes, I'm having a lovely time out here."



*Puts phone down*

*Starts sobbing*