We stopped by Japantown in San Francisco the other day and picked up an absolutely hilarious toy in the Japanese dollar store. Drawing straws meets the game Perfection in the “Party Potato”. Each person pulls a french fry out of the container. When the right french fry is pulled out, the spring is released and the french fries fly.
You don’t have to be able to read Japanese to understand these fabulous instructions. Two of the french fries are attached to strings which trigger the spring. It is awesome to see the plastic fly!
I can read Japanese.
Feel free to translate the package for us! My Japanese is rusty enough that I don’t dare try.
Loosely translated (direct translations don’t usually come out so well from japanese).
1. Put all the sticks into the main unit, then press down on the sticks until the inner bottom does not return back up.
2. One player at a time removes one stick at a time.
3. Take the "trigger" stick and all the remaining sticks on the inside come flying out. The person who took the trigger stick is the looser.
(the word trigger was not used, but a direct translation of the word "atari" would have made it hard to understand)
There seems to be a warning message just out of view. If you take a shot of the whole box I could translate that for you if you’d like, though I doubt it would provide much entertainment value. I searched for the company listed on the box as the importer/sales point, but got nothing. I couldn’t see the bottom of some of the kanji so what I guessed them to be may have been wrong.
The recycle mark there is for paper by the way, I’m sure there is a raised plastic mark on the plastic portion of the box as well. In Japan we are very strict about recycling, and most cities have at least 4 different types of trash. Where I live we have: flammable, inflammable, paper (milk packs, cardboard, etc.), paper (magazines, newspaper, office paper etc.), cardboard, plastic, PET, clear bottles, colored bottles, steel, aluminum and other metals, and I think that’s about it. Most electronic equipment is or other complex things need to be disposed of specially for a fee, but junk shops usually have trucks roll around the neighborhood which will take it away for free of pay you if it is of immediate value. The staples on that box would be disposed of in "inflammable" or "aluminum or other metals" by the way. If they catch you improperly disposing of garbage they just leave the bag with a note, but re-bagging those in flammable usually gets you by.
Thanks! That is pretty much what it looked like (even without my rudimentary Japanese). More pictures are available in this flickr set should you want to see the rest of the package.
This would go good with the Wind-Up Sushi my kids got me for Father’s Day.
Ah, now that’s an excellent idea! I’ve also got an ice cream cone from, oh, years ago, that launches its foam-ball "ice cream" on a string at the push of a button. There’s probably a bunch of goofy little food toys out there. It’d be one surreal collection.