Photographic evidence that robot frog trash cans love soccer.

Photo Credit: C.W. Kelly (Apparently I’m subcontracting my blog entries to him now.)

Curb your dog sign spotted in Kitajima

Ack! I completely forgot to prepare a blog entry this week, and I’ve run out of “funny” photos, so this week’s eleventh hour entry is an episode of Oden-kun, an excellent Japanese kids cartoon. It tells the story of anthropomorphized pieces of oden, a Japanese dish often served in winter. [Wikipedia link about oden]

This is one of my favorite episodes, featuring a rap battle. How interesting it is if you can’t understand Japanese I can’t say but… er… enjoy!

Packaging/Concept: This product hits most of the EXTREME foodstuff packaging clichés nicely: extreme is misspelled beginning with an uppercase “x”, it has a grunge aesthetic, there’s faux stenciling in the background, all that stuff.

But two things about it struck me as not being particularly EXTREME. First is the flavor itself, pepper. When I think extreme flavors, kiwi or jalapeño or whatever come to mind, but pepper? That’s a stretch.

But if they’re going to go with pepper, couldn’t they come up with a more extreme name than “Extra Pepper”? Something like “Pepper OVERLOAD!” or “PeppORGASM!” (Y’know, like a pepper orgasm. Tell me that’s not gold.) In the very least, they could have spelled it “Xtra Pepper”, am I right?

But I have to give credit where credit is due: they have created the most EXTREME PEPPER GRINDER I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE. Just look at it–it’s literally blasting out peppercorns like a goddamn shotgun!

Granted it doesn’t seem to be doing any actual grinding, as the peppercorns seem to be coming out whole… but maybe they shatter on impact when they smash into something at a hundred miles an hour.

Your dinner will never know what hit it. SUCK ON IT, food.

Taste: Very peppery.