Searching for that youthful look? Forget expensive surgery or dangerous therapies! Japan has the answer and it is as simple as it is, well, unusual. Just pop the colorful Pupeko gently into your mouth, clench your jaw and breath in and out. This will then start training and tightening your cheek and jaw muscles, helping to offset the signs of aging and bringing a fresher, youthful look back again to your cheeks!
This easy-to-use beauty and skincare product was developed by an ordinary housewife. Chikako Hirama was simply concerned about her own age and wanted an easy way to combat those telltale lines. Just try the yellow or pink Pupeko daily using such techniques as puffing out your cheeks or sucking them in while breathing through the mouthpiece. Then you can try it while keeping your head upright to give your neck and other muscles further exercise training.
Modern, four-wheeled shopping carts were invented around 1937 by Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Standard Food and Humpty Dumpty grocery store chains in Oklahoma. Before then, shoppers either used hand baskets or the two-wheeled kind of carts. They also shopped more often.
The four-wheeled carts paved the way for the rise of massive supermarkets and big-box stores, because they allowed shoppers to accumulate more stuff before heading to the checkout.
However, in later years Goldman revealed that shoppers were initially reluctant to use the four-wheeled carts. They reminded women of pushing a baby carriage, and men thought they were unmanly.
So Goldman hired attractive models to push the carts around his stores:
"When a customer entered, a young lady would offer a shopping cart. If the shopper hesitated, the woman would say, "See, other people are using them. Why not try it?"
"This was the gimmick that did the trick and the carts were then accepted without further difficulty," Goldman said.
March 1937: A tricked-out payroll satchel foiled would-be robbers. From Newsweek (Apr 3, 1937):
In Harrison, N.J., bandits last week held up a messenger and seized his satchel containing a $2,700 pay roll. They didn't notice their victim pull a wire in the bag's handle as he handed it over. Ten seconds later revolver blanks inside the satchel started exploding and clouds of sulphur smoke belched from holes in the bottom. In terror the gunmen dropped their loot and fled.
Quite ingenious, but seems like it would work only once, since after that everyone would know what the trick was. So how did they protect the payroll subsequently?
The inventors of the Licki Brush say, "We have designed LICKI brush to bring you and your cat closer. By using LICKI with your cat on a regular basis, you'll develop a more intimate and bonded relationship, much like a mama cat bonds with her young."
As of May 22, on Kickstarter they're one-third of the way to successfully funding the manufacture of this thing.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.