Scent and Non-sensibility

Hana Yakiniku-1

Our Wrongest Product Award nominations have featured several products based on dubious additions of media, notably shower heads, toilets and even coffins that add speakers. But this may be our first nomination for a product that adds scent. The Hana Yakiniku (which apparently translates as “Nose Grilled Meat”) follows a long tradition of odd mashup devices from Japan, including the aforementioned toilet with speakers.

It works by means of a scent-filled accessory that plugs into your cellphone’s earphone jack, enabling you to smell two choices of red meats. A purpose of the device, they say, is for students on tight budgets so they can eat something cheap like rice while smelling savory roasted animal.

Hana Yakiniku-2

Perhaps, then, there is a better, more environmentally-minded application in aiding meat lovers to go vegetarian: it might enable those tofu or seitan meat substitute dishes to seem more satisfyingly meat-like.

via LaughingSquid

Previous Wrongest Product Award nominations 

The Wrongest Product Awards will go to those products (and their designers) that embody the least amount of redeeming value while incurring the use of unnecessary, often gratuitous, materials or energy.

How is this relevant to EcoOptimism, you might ask? Easy – it shows how extraneous so many products are, often in a “what-were-they-thinking” sense.

Nominations are open. Send yours to ImNotBuyinIt (at) EcoOptimism.com.

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