edible.

When I first found this I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or a conceptual exercise or a viral. Turns out it’s real. Which leaves me feeling very conflicted: a mixture of curiosity, admiration, bewilderment, and abject horror.

Edible sells the most fucked up shit you’ve never eaten. And for good reason…

Edible is an online smorgasbord of exotic foodstuffs from around the world. And we’re not talking escargot-exotic. If your idea of pushing culinary boundaries is steak tartare, then please stop reading now. Because we’re talking “Giant Toasted Leafcutter Ants” exotic.

The site is so chic, and the monochromatic Helvetica-heavy packaging so modern, that you might not realize that your Antlix Lollipop isn’t just pretty to look at – it’s filled with bugs!

Besides being visually appealing, Edible is also a treasure trove of amazing sales and marketing positioning – necessary when you’re trying to sell things like this. For the Antlix Lollipop, they make it clear that not only is it peppermint flavoured (as opposed to “ant flavoured”, I suppose) but that it’s “less daunting to try”. And anytime licking ants is considered less daunting, you know you’re in for a real treat.

Real treats like Tequila Worm Lollipops, Scorpion Toffee Candy, and Scorpion Vodka…

That’s right. The Tequilalix Lollipop is not only sugar-free, but it’s got a real live worm suspended inside. If years of hitting the end of the tequila bottle and realizing that “why, yes, I am drunk enough to eat that worm” have left you desensitized, then how about scorpions. Big ones. With stingers. When you’ve reached the end of your bottle of Scorpion Vodka, there’s a full-sized edible scorpion to chow down on (though, and I’m not joking, as the site says “please be careful of the sharp stinger”). And if you want to try eating bugs while sober, there’s always Toffee Scorpion Candy.

Moving beyond insect-laden booze, the site also offers some more mainstream romantic gifts, like the Pearl Lollipop (made from ground pearls) and the hand-rolled 24 Karat Gold Lollipop. Useless, yes. Impressive, possibly.

But, let’s be real, on a website that sells Thai Curry Crickets, gold suckers are for pussies. So let’s get onto the carnivorous stuff…

That’s right. Reindeer Paté is the perfect holiday treat – sing about Rudolph while spreading Blitzen on a cracker. My personal favourite, the site makes a worthy bid for understatement of the year when it describes it’s hand-picked Mopani Worms as “an interesting addition to dinner parties”. No shit.

cookthink.

Cookthink is a lot like Musicovery for your food. Instead of the music-radios site’s colour and emotion based searches, Cookthink asks the simple question “what are you craving?”. Then you can enter in specific ingredients, dishes, cuisine styles, or “mood” and the search engine will bring up recipes to satisfy you. The moods are pretty entertaining unto themselves, ranging from experiential ideas like “festive” and “hangover-friendly” to more enigmatic choices like “resinous”, “minimalist”, and “oceany”.

chocolate from mary & matt + brooklyn brothers.

I think I’ve figured out the key secrets to making modern-urban-funky chocolatricks. Herein, my thoughts:

1. Helvetica. The international font of modern. Use it everywhere. Use it often.
2. Packaging should include white, the traditional foil, and pink. Not any pink, but acid Barbie doll porno pink. The kind of pink that makes your eyeballs wiggle a little when you look at it.
3. Much like dropping cherry bombs in the toilet or stealing a large diamond from a pedestal in an art gallery, you need to create a diversion. Fool me somehow. If my mind is left to focus on the fact that I’m eating chocolate, I might get fat. Confuse and befuddle me and it’s possible my metabolism will be right behind.

I give you Exhibit A:

Here’s the Chocolate Scrabble bar from New York design team Mary & Matt. Clearly demonstrating all three hallmarks of choco-cool, the best of all is the Scrabble-game diversion. You’ll be so busy thinking up “qu” words that you won’t have time to count calories. Unfortunately, it’s not available on their website as of right now. Either it sold out, or Hasbro (á la Facebook’s Scrabulous) is trying to sue their asses off for daring to tread upon the sanctity of Scrabble™®© without their express permission. It’s a game, not the Qur’an, let’s try and keep that in mind. Also keep in mind the proper and legal trade-marking, registered trade-marking, and copyright I have assigned to the Scrabble™®© name, should anyone from Hasbro see this and have the urge to run me into the poorhouse.

And now, Exhibit B:

Fat Pig Chocolate, created by New York creativos Brooklyn Brothers, features all the hallmarks of cool candy. You’ve got your vagina-pink foil and nifty branding in Helvetica. But, in a surprise twist, rather than divert you from the fact that you’re eating candy, they’ve called a spade a spade. Eat up fatty!

agata jaworska: made in transit + gropak.

One of my favourite things in the world are those Boston leaf lettuces – the ones that come with the little piece of moist dirt wrapped around the roots so that the lettuce is actually still growing a little. Despite the fact that it’s travelled from Boston in a plastic box, it tastes fresher and more alive than something that’s been totally separated from it’s growth source.

I’m also assuming Boston lettuce comes from Boston, but that could be a big assumption.

An evolution in the growing idea of sustainability during transit is the Gropak for Made in Transit. Designed by Poland-born, Canada-raised, and now Netherlands-based designer Agata Jaworska, this packaging prototype is designed so that the oyster mushrooms inside would actually grow during shipping and be harvested by the consumer just before eating. Fresh. We all know, even though we don’t like to think about it, that food slowly starts to die as soon as it’s harvested, so Made in Transit looks at ways to create growth during the entire supply chain process.

Agata’s a little bit brilliant, and she’s even got a funky little vid to explain the whole scheme behind Made in Transit:

peter menzel + faith d’alulsio: hungry planet.

Sometimes all it takes is a little perspective. In an increasingly globalized world, it’s still sometimes shocking to see just how disparate our lives are with other human beings around the world. For their book “Hungry Planet: What the World Eats” photographer Peter Menzel and author Faith D’Alulsio embarked on a journey to 24 countries in every continent around the world. Spending a week each with 30 different families, they not only took part in their daily lives but documented how much they ate and what they spent on food in one week.

The results speak plainly for themselves. Not just a matter of poverty versus wealth, but of the obvious quality and health value of what other cultures are eating, usually for less money. Here’s just a sampling of the families, but you can check them all out at the Hungry Planet Flickr set.  Thanks to MK @ SocietalSickeness for sending me this.

Germany – US $500.07

 

United States – US $341.98

 

Italy – US $260.11

 

Egypt – US $68.53

 

Mongolia – $40.02

 

Breijding (Sudanese refugee camp in Chad) – US $1.23 

 

trekking mahlzeiten: cheeseburger in a can.

This is all kinds of wrong. Is it strange that in some kind of Andy Warhol-esque way I want this more as a work of art then as an actual foodstuff? Come to think of it, “foodstuff” is a good definition for whatever this… thing… is.

The brain-child of Swiss company Katadyn, which specializes in ready-made meals for campers and athletes (though I’m not sure which athlete would actually consume a canned burger) through it’s Trekking Mahlzeiten brand, this cheeseburger lasts for 12 months. That’s right. Something that supposedly contains cheese and meat has a one-year shelf life. That just ain’t right, and yet there’s something about it that’s oddly fascinating.

If the cheeseburger isn’t your thing – and how could it not be – then they’ve also got dehydrated wine. Coming in handy single serving pouches, much like Crystal Light, just rip open, add water, and stir. Sommeliers everywhere just cringed.

studio m: happy pills.

Candy is awesome. Drugs are awesome. Candy + Drugs = Mega Awesome.

Um, what I meant to say was Candy is Awesome. Store-bought drugs that are legally sanctioned by the government are awesome. Candy + Tylenol = ….ah, screw it.

Designed in Barcelona by studio m, Happy Pills is a modern day collision between confectionary and apothecary. The store, literally wedged between two large buildings, might go unnoticed if not for the acid-pink Red Cross logo above it’s door. Inside, the pharmaceutical design bend is consistent: jellybean filled pill bottles and fully-stocked “first aid kits” line the shelves, or you can self-medicate by filling up bottles with your candy of choice. My personal fave are the handy “morning-afternoon-night” pill holders, just to make sure your sugar-toothing stays on schedule.

vessel: the perfect drink.

This is the kind of futuristic brainstorming I love. This idea is so cool I’m thoroughly disappointed that it’s just that – an idea.

TheGreenerGrass.org is a site that fully conceptualizes ground-breaking (though still fictional) products that are openly collaborated on by it’s members. From that springboard comes Vessel – the world’s first personalized custom beverage.

Vessel would let you create your ideal drink by blending Base (a nutrient combo you’d select based on your gender and age), Flavour (this one’s pretty self-explanatory), and Agent (add different kinds of vitamins, proteins, energy boosters, etc). Depending on how many different Flavours and Agents you mix, there would be a limitless number of drinks you could invent for yourself. Personally, I would add vodka. Or maybe mojito mix.

Via TheGreenerGrass.org

pipparkakan: gumdrop butt…ons.

Once again Scandinavia asserts it’s world-wide dominance over everything cool. Kinky Swedish Chef? Yes, please. Pipparkakan sheds lights on the woefully under-explored world that is pornographic gingerbread people with these naughty cookie cutters. I ordered some for my Grandma.

Via Cube Me

harvey nichols: they shoot models, don’t they?

This viral didn’t turn out to actually be about what I thought it was about. Watch it first, then read on…

(Agency: DDB London)

See what I mean? I thought we were watching some sort of PSA-ish comment on the ruthlessness of the fashion industry / anorexia / kate moss / marginalization of women with the whole mental flip-flop of “if we wouldn’t do this to an animal, we shouldn’t do it to Gisele” thrown in. Maybe a bit odd coming from a department store, but every market has the right to ride the consumer awareness wave now and then.

But after digging deeper on the Harvey Nichols site, it turns out the whole Foodmarket AW07 catwalk thing is really to sell gourmet foods online. For real. Like “Gloucester Old Spot Pork Sausage” made with Amalfi Coast Lemons.

In the end, we’re openly acknowledging that the models are animals and the glamour of fashion is being used to encourage us to buy meat made from the Ostrich/Naomi Campbell that we killed once she finished her last walk. We’re not turning the models into false icons of unattainable feminine perfection… we’re turning them into sausage.

This makes me feel totally weird. I’ve spent some time thinking about it and I’ve decided I don’t like this spot. Which is completely beside the point, because I’ve now expended so much energy thinking about it and Harvey Nichols that I’ve proven how wildly effective this viral really is. Damn them…

Via Adverblog