Definitely something for the strong-and-silent types out there! The Macho Man's Point-it Book resembles a child's thick card-paged picture book but the pictures inside are things that Macho Men Want.
Alongside the more predictable images of Beer, Pizza, the TV remote and a bottle opener are some particularly nice shots of a chainsaw, a lump of raw meat, and my own personal favourite, and enormous yellow JCB type digger. What more could a man want?
Silicone really is a wonder material. Tough, flexible, heat-resistant and food safe it really is very practical in the kitchen. Of course the other great thing about silicone is you can create some really crazy shapes with it!
Take this Peace of Cake mould. Made completely from silicone, it's flexible and tough enough to make it through the oven and the dishwasher unscathed and as a bonus it contains no metal, so if you're a microwave addict you can even zap your cakes.
Designed around the ethos: Make Cake Not War, a proportion of the proceeds from Peace of Cake sales goes to organisations dedicated to peaceful resolution of conflict, so you can feel warm and fuzzy as well as peaceful as you tuck into a slice of your favourite treat.
No, it's not a suggestion, it's the gift that keeps on giving! This really clever gift idea combines the ever popular Grow-Your-Own theme with the comedy value of poo! Everyone knows that there's nothing like muck when it comes to garden fertiliser.
The poo comes in three different 'flavours'... erm, varieties. Elephant, Rhino and Reindeer. Each quantity of poo is dried and packaged to be odour free - after all, poo might be funny but we'd rather not have to live with the smell! The boxes come with a picture of the animal in question's bottom and some seeds to grow in the poo. Elephant comes with rose seeds, Rhino with banana plant seeds and the Reindeer with Christmas tree seeds.
The little boxes are biodegradable, so you can start your seeds out in them, and then just plant the whole thing in a bigger pot once the box is outgrown.
Much more restful than fireworks, you can light and release a Sky Lantern on a still night and watch it rise gracefully into night sky. If you're really lucky someone might spot it and think it's a UFO.
The Flying Lantern comes all ready assembled with it's own fuel block, so you just need to pick a still night, unfold it, light it and watch it fly.
Vegetables don't have to be boring. More than just necessary for your health, it seems they can be decorative and entertaining too!
I love these worktop savers, the toughened glass has a landscape design made entirely out of fruit and veg. I particularly like the cauliflower sheep grazing peacefully on a hillside of watermelon with a lone brocolli tree in the background. The procession of snails made from courgettes and breadrolls is cute too. Coming up close behind on my list of 'wants' are the vegetable sunflowers and the tractor made from peppers and pumpkins.
Given the choice I would probably have one worktop saver of each of the four designs, but sadly my kitchen doesn't have quite that much worktop.
The 80s has definitely been gone long enough for us all get nostalgic about it. Apparently even about the politicians. The Iron Lady, as she was known, saw us right through that decade and the blue suit, rock-hard hair do and her propensity to crush unions left, right and centre has gone down in history.
It's quite appropriate then, that some bright spark has chosen to immortalise the former Prime Minister in nutcracker form. She's wearing the suit and the legs are sprung for easy cracking.
She even comes packaged in a box with a Number 10 door in the front. A nice touch, as she never did want to leave that address.
Maggie Nutcracker - £9.99 from ShinyShack.com
Now this is a great alternative to banging hooks into walls. These cleverly sticky photo frames are designed to be the perfect fit for a standard 6" x 4" photo.
So all you need is your photo and the frame. Peel off the sticky backing and fit your photo to the frame. Then whack the frame onto the appropriate wall, door, cupboard, you name it. The sticky backing will hold the frame in place, but will also peel off perfectly so you're not stuck with it forever.
I think it's great, you can move photos around and swap them out according to your whim without having to worry about putting up hooks or picture pins. Ideal for adding a bit of colour to your room without knocking holes in the plaster.
Taking great pictures is so easy these days with digital cameras and high quality printing easily available, so why not display a few more of those shots, rather than keeping them shut away in an album or filed somewhere on your PC?
Now this takes me back. If I close my eyes I can still see that poor, daft scout troop eating their packed lunch on the rollercoaster. I wonder what happened to that chubby boy with the really disastrous bottle of milk? If you know what I'm talking about, perhaps you too wrote into Jim'll Fix It, hoping to do something weird and adventurous. I think my request was something to do with tobogganing...
Suffice it to say, Jim didn't Fix It for me, but the Jim'll Fix It Badge is still guaranteed to make me smile. This one looks just like the original ones and is even authorised by the great Sir Jimmy Savile himself. Ok, so it's actually a bar of soap, but we can still wear it with pride before washing away the day's grime.
And you know what you'll be humming in the shower... 'Your letter was only the start of it, one letter and now you're a part of it...'
Jim'll Fix It Soap - £7.99 from ShinyShack.com
I'm a relative newcomer to the joys of Satellite Navigation. I won't deny that it is very useful, but there are times when I could cheerfully throttle that very calm lady who keeps repeating, 'Turn around when possible' over and over again because I've missed my turn on the roundabout.
Because of this, the Sat-Nag has raised quite a few giggles. It looks very similar to a real Sat Nav system but it won't actually navigate you anywhere. However, at the press of a button it will come out with some really amusing instructions in exactly the same voice as the Sat Nav lady. I particularly liked the one she came out with today - 'At the next turning I'm going violently grab the sides of my seat because a car at the junction has moved forward one inch'. It took me right back to being a learner driver with my mum in the passenger seat. Of course she used to thump her right foot down hard into the passenger footwell at the same time, desperate seeking a brake pedal that didn't exist. Happy memories.
Sat-Nag - £8.99 from ShinyShack.com
These two badges definitely belong in a pair. We've all got a dark side and then we also have days when we're really nice too.
These two badges are the Yin and Yang of the Old School Badge world. Both designed to look like those school shields you got for being milk monitor or just really good at shinning up ropes, these badges are coloured white and black with Saint and Sinner printed across. Just pick the one that suits your mood!
Saint Badge - £3.99 from ShinyShack.com
Sinner Badge - £3.99 from ShinyShack.com
The first thing that strikes you is that it's pink. It's really, really pink. I'm not a bubblegum and Barbie kind of a person but I still found myself warming to the Chocolate Clock. I think what won me over was the little chocolate that popped out of the doors beneath the clock face every hour.
Granted, you do have to put the chocolates in the clock in the first place, but I love the fact that I'll be getting on with other things when suddenly I'll hear 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy' playing in the background and a little chocolate appears.
Chocolate Clock - £19.99 from ShinyShack.com
We all know someone who believes that their contribution to society is ensuring taste and style rule unchallenged and sartorial elegance is achieved wherever possible. This generally takes the form of a scathing critique of the outfit of anyone within range with special lists compiled of particularly bad fashion crimes.
To make life easier for these critical individuals, why not present them with a Fashion Citation Pad? This allows them to easily tick off truly awful fashion infringements and present the completed form to the hapless criminal. As the pad says It's Better That You Know.
Ranging from the fairly harmless: Excessive Denim to the truly damning: Camel Toe or Inappropriate Bulge(s) the pad is guaranteed to maximise chagrin on the part of the fashion criminal while requiring minimal effort on behalf of the fashion police. Keep up the good work girls.
Fashion Citation Pad - £3.99 from ShinyShack.com
Think you're clever eh? Tell the world!
It's the perfect badge for those gifted types out there. You know, the ones that are going to discover the replacement to String Theory, find a more elegant solution to Fermat's Last Theorem and are currently building a nuclear reactor in the garden shed. They may be socially challenged but that doesn't matter because they're really, really smart.
Consolation for a lack of a social life, or just a pure statement of fact? Every genius should have one.
Genius Badge - £3.99 from ShinyShack.com
I surely can't be alone in waking up in the night feeling thirsty, taking the glass of water from my bedside cabinet and then in my sleepy state pouring about half of it down my neck. Of course then I'm wide awake with a soggy pillow and not much water left.
So naturally I'm rather impressed with the idea of the LiteCup. It has a nifty and ingenious drinking valve so no water will flow until you suck at the lip of the cup. This prevents those unfortunate Tsunami moments when you misjudge the pouring angle.
Not only that, but the incredibly smart base of the cup emits a gentle glow when switched on, so you've got a nightlight to prevent you kneecapping yourself on the furniture when you get up to use the loo in the night. Can you tell that night time is something of a mini-disaster-ridden adventure for me at times?
The nightlight bit is light intensity sensitive, so it'll only come on in the dark and will last up to 3 months in regular use. To make the whole thing more practical the light base detatches so the rest of the beaker can just go straight in the dishwasher.
It's the ideal solution for anyone who's all thumbs until that second cup of coffee in the mornings!
The LiteCup - £5.99 from ShinyShack.com
Nobody really enjoys peeling veg, so here's a cheerful little chap who'll take the boredom out of the job and brighten up your kitchen while he's at it.
With a twinkle in his eye, the Monkey Peeler will take the skins off a variety of veg and fruit including apples, carrots and potatoes, without peeling away all the goodness like a knife can.
The Monkey Peeler has a comfy handle and a swivel blade, so he's very quick and easy to use.
Just make sure you keep him away from the bananas...
Monkey Peeler - £4.99 from ShinyShack
If you can't bear to be without your iPod, even in the bath, then the iSwim iPod Case is going to make you smile.
The iSwim iPod Case protects your mp3 player from both sand and water, and if you drop your iPod into water while it's wearing the case it'll float harmlessly on the surface.
With the iSwim iPod Case you'll truly be able to have music wherever you go, so watery activities like swimming and sailing will never again have to be music-free.
The iSwim iPod Case comes with a variety of accessories and is a suitable size and shape to make it work just as well with other brands of mp3 player of a similar size.
iSwim iPod Case - £12.99 from ShinyShack
"Love is... never having to say you're sorry." But for those occasions when an apology really can't be avoided, there's the Apology Notepad.
The Apology Notepad contains fifty pre-printed sheets giving a range of reasons (or 'excuses', depending on how you look at it) for your behaviour. These include:
Keyboards are traditionally not the most fun things in the world. Conventionally boring beige or black, they hardly add much to your desk and once you've dropped some sandwich crumbs and half a cup of coffee on them, they're really not an attractive prospect.
Cool, brightly coloured and bendy with it this RetroBoard doesn't just brighten things up, but it's wipe clean too! Made from silicone, the RetroBoard is bendy and easy to clean. It's smaller than a standard keyboard so it's perfect for portable purposes and carrying around to LAN parties.
Definitely a good addition to any desktop.
RetroBoard - £19.99 from ShinyShack.com
There she blows! Tissues!
Cute and cuddly aren't terms you'd necessarily associated with killer whales but this soft plush version really is nice to touch. This soft and squeezable orca has a zip in the bottom so you can unzip it, take out the airbag that gives it that chubby appearance and replace it with a small roll of tissues. Then you can just whip tissues out of the blow hole, leaving the next tissue poking out like a little jet of water.
Or if you just like cuddly whales and don't need tissues, you can leave the airbag in there and it's just a soft squashy friend.
Tissue Whale - £9.99 from ShinyShack.com
In preparation for that truly monumental occasion, Talk Like A Pirate Day (19th September), I'm in pirate mood. Granted my 'Avast there me Hearties!' needs some work and my parrot is battery powered, but I reckon if I start getting into character now, I'll be at least an enthusiastic landlubber, even if I haven't got the accent quite right when the time comes.
To add a bit of mood I have topped both the end of my pencil and my biro with a rather natty skull. I've got the one with the eyepatch and the tricorn on my pencil, while the biro is graced by the one in the pork pie hat. For some reason Pork Pie reminds me of a chap who works for the Inland Revenue. Funny that.
Pirate Pencil Toppers - £4.99 from ShinyShack.com
(Don't forget - 19th September - Talk Like A Pirate Day - be there or be keelhauled for the dirty dog you Arrrrr!)
I'm playing with putty again. This is because I have a selection of 25g pots scattered around my desk and every so often I pop of the lid of one of them and have a jolly good squidge, (that's not a real word is it?).
The irresistible thing about Bionic Putty for me is the colour changing properties. I've got 3 colour changing varieties, orange, blue and green. If I take one out of its pot and and give it a really good squash and stretch the colour changes start.
As it softens and warms up, the colour changes. The orange goes to yellow, the green goes to supposedly yellow, but I'd say more of a really light lime green, and the blue turns white. The obsessive thing is, if you stop playing with it, even for a short time, it starts cooling down and changing colour again, so to keep it in its changed state you've got to keep working it.
It's good exercise for the hands too! I've been very tempted to mix all three colours together and see what I get, and whether it will still change colour. My guess is that I'll get brown, changing to light brown. That's not pretty, so I'll resist the temptation for now.
Bionic Putty - £2.99 from ShinyShack.com
So washing up isn't fun. There's a reason the dishwasher was invented, people don't jump up and down with joy at the thought of of dirty dishes and soapy water.
However, even if you've got a dishwasher, there are some things that have to be done by hand. And if you've got to do it, why not use a cute little kitchen gadget that looks smart and makes life easier?
With this little brush you can fill it up with your favourite detergent (do people have a favourite detergent?) and dispense it squirt by squirt by pressing the little button at the top.
It's cute, it's lime coloured and I'd quite like to have one on my draining board. I do like a nice kitchen gadget!
Detergent Dispenser Brush - £3.99 from ShinyShack.com
I'm on the verge of being driven completely crazy. I could never have guessed how frustrating two interlocked simple pieces of plastic could be.
When the Apple and Wurmm puzzle arrived on my desk, I smiled. I thought it seemed like a really nice idea. The apple has holes punched in it, and the Wurmm, (or worm), is a rigid piece of curved plastic that spins through the holes. Joined holes allow the worm to pivot and change direction.
The name of the game is to wiggle the Wurmm into position so that it can be removed from the apple. Simple? Well, yes, in an incredibly frustrating yet unstoppably obsessive way. I've been working on it on and off for a few hours now and I haven't worked it out yet. I'm determined to get there though, so the fiddle fest continues.
Apple and Wurmm Puzzle - £4.99 from ShinyShack.com
Remember The Sharp End? Well the creators of that wince-making comedy item were clearly not content with altering our perception of the household moggy, they've decided to mess with Man's Best Friend too!
The pencil sharpener is concealed in the white plastic dog's bottom. When you sharpen your pencil, you'll get a plaintive barking noise, and the sharpenings will drop into the dog basket below.
You'll never look the family mutt in the eye again.
Dog Bottom Sharpener - £6.99 from ShinyShack.com
It's a bit like those mats you can get with the numbered dance steps on to teach you to tango and rumba, but with slightly different markings!
In an effort to liven things up in the bedroom department, some inventive soul has combined the spirit of the Kama Sutra with a walk in instruction manual on a sheet, with numbered hand, foot, knee and bottom positions for both participants! I wanted to say both parties, but a party with the Karmasheetra in it would be quite an eye-opener, so you might want to keep the curtains closed to avoid shocking the neighbours.
Light hearted fun for the flexible, just make sure you don't put your back out!
There's something quite compelling about peculiar flavour combinations. Do you remember Cherry Flavoured Coke? It was that weird a concept that everybody wanted to try it.
I'm suffering a similar fascination with Bacon Mints and Monkey Mints. Firstly let me clarify that Bacon Mints may be bacon flavoured with a hint of mint, but Monkey Mints are definitely not monkey flavoured. Relieved? Actually, they're banana flavoured. Slightly worried now?
I'm not sure who came up with the novel idea of mixing the classic flavour of mint with both bacon and banana, but I'm all for a bit of food experimentation. In the words of pretty much everyone's mum: 'How do you know you don't like it until you've tried it?'
Sound advice there.
Bacon Mints - £1.99 from ShinyShack.com
Monkey Mints - £1.99 from ShinyShack.com
There's nothing quite so more-ish than a big sheet of bubble wrap to pop when you've got a bit of time on your hands, (except perhaps Banoffee Crumble Biscuits, but that's another story). The down side is when you've completely cleared an area of bubbles and all that's left is the sad, flat plastic sheet.
Well, strange-but-true, that's not a problem anymore. You can have never-ending bubbles without all the bulky problems of carting a huge roll of bubble wrap around with you. Aside from the fact you'd have to buy the roll its own seat on the train, people are just going to think you're odd.
The Bubble Wrap Keychain lets you pop obsessively to your heart's content, while still being small enough to fit in your pocket. You get 7 bubbles, and each one makes a popping sound as you press it. You have to press a different bubble each time, or else no popping sound, and if you're popping really obsessively you'll find you're occasionally get rewarded by a loud 'Yee-haaaa!'.
Just don't leave it lying around on your desk, it's an irresistible magnet for fiddly fingers, and people will constantly be making off with it to getting their poptastic fill.
Bubblewrap Keychain - £5.99 from ShinyShack.com
What marvellous stuff Space Putty is. You can roll it up and bounce it like a ball, but if you leave it sitting for a while it'll melt back down into a puddle.
Apparently this stuff has its origins back in the Second World War, when American scientists were searching for rubber alternatives. This stuff really wouldn't make a great tyre or shoe sole, but it is fun to fiddle with.
You can roll it out into a long rope, plait it, twist it and squidge it back together again, but unlike something like plasticine, you won't be able to make long lasting models out of it. That intriguing tendency to 'melt' means that you'd come back to find your artistic works of art lying in around in blobs. But then that's part of its charm.
My favourite activity at the moment is to fold the putty to trap the air, then pop the air pockets like a kind of endlessly flexible bubble wrap! All this and metallic silver too, so it looks like a molten metal. Squish it, stretch it, snap it, then put it back in its pot.
Space Putty - £4.99 from ShinyShack.com
Make embarrassing photos a thing of the past, or just make them embarrassing in a different way! Rather than block out the eyes on a photo to protect the innocent, just wear these black bar shades instead for instant anonymity!
Granted they do look a little odd, but you can guarantee that your eyes will be blacked out in every single photo. Of course that just might make you stand out from the crowd even more, but if fear of looking ridiculous means nothing compared to preserving your privacy, then why not go for it?
Black Bars - £7.99 from ShinyShack.com
Great rainy day entertainment this. Arm yourself with a box of matches, some coins and one or two other household bits and pieces and you've got all you need to keep you puzzling for hours.
This clever little book has three sections, one dedicated to matchstick puzzles, one to coins and a third to other puzzles. Each puzzle has a clear instructions and a big picture so you know just how to lay out the puzzle and what you need to do. How to solve it is a different matter! Luckily the solutions are tucked away in the back of the book so you can always take a sneaky peek.
The Pocket Puzzles Book - £3.99 from ShinyShack.com
Renewable energy sources are making their way into our homes all the time. Some are just jumping on the 'green' bandwagon, but others are actually a really useful addition. Like this keyring light. With the advent of LEDs everyone can have a tiny torch on their keyring for unexpected dark moments. Now you can also top your pint-sized torch battery by leaving it out in the sun.
The tiny solar panel is plenty big enough to top up the charge on the battery, and the three bright LEDs give out plenty of light.
It's practical and pocket-sized, who could ask for more?
Solar Powered Keyring Light - £7.99 from ShinyShack.com
What is it about dinosaurs? They have this amazing fascination for us from Jurassic Park down to those grey plastic Diplodocus models that are good for chewing or belabouring a sibling with. One thing dinosaurs probably weren't is cute. Huge great leathery things with enormous feet generally aren't, but once you put them in cartoon form, even the biggest monsters can appear cuddly.
Here, the dinosaur motif is displayed on a teeny tiny towel about the size of a biscuit. Drop the towel in water and it'll expand to about 30cm x 30cm with the dino-decoration clearly displayed. As you can see here, Triceratops manages to look quite sweet, although my real favourite will still be good old Diplodocus.
Dinosaur Magic Towel - £1.99 from ShinyShack.com
The ideal calculator for chocoholics to work out exactly how many bars they've got through in a week!
Not only does it look like a bar of chocolate, with each rubbery chunk given over to a separate key, but it comes wrapped just like a big, delicious chocolate bar. The main problem is I get ridiculously hungry looking at it, so definitely not a great choice for dieters.
The Chocolator - £4.95 from ShinyShack.com
A bit of a change from a piggy bank anyway. The Monkey Box is a ceramic money box in the shape of a chimp. So, Money Box - Monkey Box, cute. The really nice thing is the ceramic is flocked, so the monkey looks warm and cuddly, even if he isn't.
All the other bits are fairly standard, a slot in the back for coins and notes and a bung in the bottom to remove the stash. The design's the thing that makes it special, I'll take a chubby chimp over a pottery pig any day.
Monkey Bank - £10.95 from ShinyShack.com
Tissue holders and loo roll covers don't have to be chintzy affairs that your Gran would like. This is a very cute design that's made to hold a toilet tissue roll inside and dispense via the glue tube nozzle.
Tissue dispensing aside, I love the idea of having a huge tube of glue on my desk. It's over a foot long and bright yellow, so kind of catches the eye. I guess the only thing you can't do is use it to glue your other giant stationery together.
Squeezee - £11.95 from ShinyShack.com
I was always taught to peel garlic by laying a clove down on the chopping board, and using a wide bladed knife, bang the flat of the blade onto the clove. In theory this should flatten the clove sufficiently to loosen the skin so it could be easily removed. In practice bits of squished garlic clove flew everywhere and it wasn't uncommon to cut your hand on the knife in the process. Getting garlic juice in the cut just added insult to injury.
Granted I am particularly ham-fisted in the kitchen, but this little gadget caught my imagination. It's basically a silicone tube that you pop your garlic clove into and then rub it between your hands. The skin on the clove is removed, leaving the clove intact.
Neat and simple and being silicone it can be easily rinsed under the tap or popped in the dishwasher. Now if only someone could find something similar for chopping onions!
Garlic Peeler - £2.95 from ShinyShack.com
Tea addicts like myself can really rejoice in a pint sized mug. Having gone through the wrangle of who is actually going to make the tea, and then making it, the enjoyment of drinking it can be pathetically short lived.
With a whole pint of tea I find there's enough in a mug to wake me up in the morning before I have to go for a second round with the kettle.
The other issue is biscuit dunking of course. There aren't many mugs out there that you can comfortably get a chocolate digestive properly dunked in without having to snap the biscuit in half (a real dunking no-no). The pint mug has a nice wide mouth, welcoming little biscuits in... well, you get the picture. Incidentally, I rank Banoffee Crumble Biscuits very highly in the dunking stakes, but you have to be quick as their tea absorbency is quite quick and no one wants the trauma of a soggy biscuit in their tea.
The Pint Mug - £9.95 from ShinyShack.com
Hmmm toothy! A slightly different take on the novelty ice trays that keep us entertained while sipping our favourite beverage. This ice tray produces two realistic sets of dentures instead!
Probably not the type of ice you'd serve up for Granny, but very entertaining to give friends a drink with a set of false gnashers floating in it. I think it would look particularly fetching in a tumbler with G&T and a slice of lemon.
The pink colour of the tray is exactly the same colour as denture cream, which is a nice touch.
Frozen Smiles - £4..95 from ShinyShack.com
I opened a box of these for visitors as I'm not a fan of dark chocolate, so I thought I'd be safe from temptation. Sadly I was wrong. 'Oh, they're delicious, you must try one', they said. Big mistake. I did try one, then another, and another.
The great thing is that the chocolate, despite being dark, isn't really bitter, it's rich and smooth and works amazingly well with the crunchy biscuit that's delicately flavoured with ginger. I'm now a fan, although I'm not converting to dark chocolate in general that's for sure. I'll try and keep them for special occasions though as even my active imagination can't stretch to describing them as health food!
Dark Chocolate Gingers - £2.95 from ShinyShack.com
It's been pointed out to me that I promised to explain my rather cryptic remarks about NunChucks, and then didn't. Possibly flipping nuns around has left me with the attention span of a goldfish, who knows?
I was tempted to finish this entry right there, for comedy timing, but that wouldn't explain any more about NunChucks, and I did promise, didn't I?
It's all in the name with the NunChuck. A great name that just rolls off the tongue and more importantly explains exactly what the thing is. Some genius has created a gun-shaped implement for hurling small objects through the air. At this point I get the feeling the designer had one of those shining moments that happen rarely and thought, if we got some really small nuns.... And joy of joys, the NunChuck was born.
The 'gun' has a little flip up mechanism that will chuck a miniature plastic nun up to 15 feet if you're lucky, although I never managed to get it going quite that far, usually because it hit a wall first, my office just isn't that big.
You get a selection of nuns to choose from and I spent a bit of time surfing the web trying to identify which orders they belonged to, as their habits are a range of colours. I was unsuccessful, but it's quite possible that the models aren't true to life. Which is probably just as well.
NunChuck - £5.99 from ShinyShack.com
Isn't Silicone a wonderful material? It can even make oven gloves fun. The marvellous heat-resistant properties of Silicone have been utilised by creating fun hand puppets cum oven mitts.
Apparently able to withstand temperatures of up to 230°C, these cute animal shaped gloves will work just as well at entertaining the kids as they will at whipping a pie out of the oven.
The mitts come in orange dog or lime green frog and although I think they're much to cute to put them to work in the kitchen, at least they're dishwasher friendly so you can clean them up easily afterwards.
Hot Head Pot Holder - £8.99 from ShinyShack.com
Continuing the search for wallets that don't make you look like you've just shoved a cheese sandwich in your pocket, we now go minimalist with the Duo.
Calling it a wallet might be stretching it a bit, and stretching is one thing it doesn't do. Made from moulded plastic, the Duo is designed to hold 2 credit cards, and that's it. In cash free society that's probably sufficient. Of course it does mean you need to find somewhere else to stuff all those receipts, but if you're going for the Less is More approach it might be worth a try!
I was particularly impressed with the fact it had clearly been moulded with the contours of the back pocket in mind and curves nicely to fit in with your rear!
Duo Credit Card Holder - £4.99 from ShinyShack.com
Ever been concerned that your injuries aren't being taken seriously? Are you feeling miffed that nobody offers to call an ambulance when you stub your toe?
If your suffering has been overlooked and ignored for too long, draw attention to those life-threatening cuts and scrapes with a different kind of plaster. Your injury is a crime and people should know that!
Now you can label each and every boo boo a crime scene with these bright yellow plasters. Ideal for attention seekers everywhere, this tin of 25 crime scene bandages will make you look like you've been in the wars, even if the diagnosis is only a chipped nail!
Crime Scene Plasters - £4.99 from ShinyShack.com
Sometimes the sheer randomness of something is simply irresistible. I got a similar feeling about the NunChuck. I did mention the NunChuck? No? That'll be coming next then. Anyway, back to the Lederhosen. What is it that's so amusing about alpine trousers? Perhaps it's the association with yodelling and big steins of beer and the general impression of merriment.
Anyway, these trouser are stand-alone, they have their own little feet, and when activated by the remote control, (shaped like a sausage, nice touch that), the lederhosen hop around and yodel in a truly comedy style.
Without a doubt the most comedy remote control gadget yet.
Remote Control Lederhosen £19.99 from ShinyShack.com
Those of us who have provided pc support, whether to members of the family or in a more professional capacity will appreciate this. The confusion over pressing 'Any' Key is right up there with the mysteriously migrating task bar and the amazing self installing software, ('I didn't do anything!').
Well now someone has actually come up with an Any Key, complete with adhesive pad to attach it to the keyboard of your choice. All we have to do now is sit back and wait for the phone calls: 'I pressed the Any Key, but it's not working...'
Any Key - £2.99 from ShinyShack.com
New wallets always catch my eye. Mostly because I'm not a big fan of leather, so I've always got my eye out for new and interesting alternatives.
I like Tyvek wallets because they're so slim and lightweight. Some of the nylon wallets I've had in the past have been quite chunky, and once you've put a few credit cards in there, it's a job to fit it in your pocket.
Tyvek is altogether different. It feels like paper, but a whole lot tougher, and this design is just inspired. It really does look just like the dot matrix printouts of Yore. Ancient history now perhaps, but still a very cool design, right down to the spindle holes punched down each side. I guess if there's one thing missing, it's a clip to hold the thing closed, but I guess this is a pocket wallet that doesn't need to worry about floating around inside a handbag.
Dot Matrix Tyvek Wallet - £9.99 from ShinyShack.com
Feeling stupid? I know I am! Wary that senility might be sneaking up to catch me unawares, I've been stretching my brain cells over the bank holiday in the hope that I'll be able to undo all the damage from not thinking hard enough for years.
This Brain Trainer offers 9 different brain training games that have been designed by Mensa, so it's hardly surprising that I struggled with some of them. Thankfully there are different difficulty levels for those of us who are more intellectually challenged. It has a nice touch screen with a nifty stylus that slots neatly into the brain trainer, and the whole thing is pocket sized and battery powered so you can exercise your thinking matter pretty much anywhere. It will certainly be in my bag on my next long train journey.
Mensa Brain Trainer - £13.99 from ShinyShack.com
Did I mention I'm not a big fan of spiders? Really? Just a few times then...
Actually, this is one spider I'm not scared off. Despite the fact it is quite a lot bigger than my hand, it looks so cute and furry, I do quite like it. Although the scuttling thing it does still makes me give it a second glance.
This remote control beasty is here thanks to the Natural History Museum, who have thoughtfully created it to be on a par size-wise with the Goliath Bird Eating Tarantula. All I can say is, if I every really do meet a Goliath Bird Eating Tarantula, you won't see me for dust because this thing is big.
Thankfully this one is under the control of my remote and gets around on wheels so I have no fears for my safety. There's a clever bit of design that makes the legs move very realistically as you steer it around, although the illusion of life is lost a bit if you put it in reverse. Real spiders don't seem to have reverse.
So full marks to the Natural History Museum for creating a spider that's fun to play with yet cute enough not to freak out a self confessed arachnophobe like me.
Radio Controlled Tarantula - £24.99 from ShinyShack.com
