Tag Archives: miniature

Retro Arcade Squirrel Feeder: Insert Coin for Nuts

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Most people treat squirrels like unwanted pests. But if you’re among the animal lovers who prefer to feed the squirrels in your yard, you might want to get a squirrel feeder. And if you love classic arcade games, you’ll want to get this squirrel feeder that looks like a miniature arcade cabinet.

Etsy seller The Tree Rat Symposium makes this tiny arcade machine with its CRT display ripped out and replaced with a place for storing nuts and other snacks for squirrels. Now, if I were a squirrel, I might be disappointed if I saw a “Squirrely’s Arcade” machine and got to it only to discover I couldn’t play Pac-Man or Robotron 2084. But then I’d be like, “but snacks!” and forget all about the crushing disappointment of not being able to spend those quarters burning a hole in my furry squirrel pocket.

My only concern about this thing is that the squirrels will start lining up to play, and then I’ll have to build an entire squirrel arcade with 10 of these things, some squirrel pinball machines, and a squirrel bill breaker. But if you’re not worried about such things, you can grab one over on Etsy for $34.

Tiny Axe-Throwing Game Played with Real, Miniature Axes

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Because danger comes in all shapes and sizes (including miniature), this is the Small Viking Axe Game available from Firebox for $116. It’s a real axe-throwing game played with tiny, but still very sharp, axes. I can already close my eyes and see myself wrapping my bloody hand in a t-shirt and yelling for my wife.

As a huge fan of both miniature weaponry and throwing sharp objects, this game is a no-brain purchase for myself. Will my wife try to intercept the package and hide it from me? If she knows what’s best for me, most definitely.

The set includes a wooden target with string for hanging (preferably outdoors), three miniatures axes with burlap carrying sack, nine replacement shafts, one shaft replacement tool, and a rulebook. Obviously, I don’t need a rulebook and will make up the rules as I go along. Presumably, something along the lines of ‘last one to bleed, wins, but does have to drive all the losers to the hospital.’

A Tiny Everyday Carry Slingshot: For Plinking On The Go

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Inspired by the design of their 2017 full-size slingshot, this is the $100 Mini Sling from knife manufacturer TOPS. The company decided to create the miniature version after customers requested a smaller, everyday carry sling for plinking on the go. Empty cans beware!

The sling measures 3.5″ x 1.75″ and weighs only 3.2 ounces. TOPS insists it’s so light that “you’d forget you were carrying it, if only it wasn’t so fun to shoot.” It also comes with a brown leather sheath that can be attached to a belt either horizontally or vertically. Me? I plan on carrying mine in my fanny pack with my Big League Chew and sunscreen.

I’ve been known to spend the better part of a Saturday afternoon on my back deck casually drinking beer and plinking the empty cans lined up on the handrail. Do I start to miss more often the more beers I’ve had? That depends on who you ask, but if you ask someone who’s telling the truth, yes.

[via Dude I Want That]

A Desktop Rocket Shaped Candy-Grabbing Claw Machine

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Candy: it maintains my sugar high at a suitable level, so I don’t have to take a nap at my desk midday. And you know what’s better than regular candy? Candy, you’ve won. Enter the $44 Rocket Candy Grabber available from Firebox, a desktop claw machine you fill with candy, then empty with skill.

The Rocket Candy Grabber is powered by 3 AA batteries and has LEDs that light up, and it plays “intense” carnival music while you test your skill at grabbing candy. Frustrated you aren’t grabbing the candy fast enough? Just crack the thing open like Humpty Dumpty. Just don’t go asking all the king’s horses and all the king’s men for assistance putting it back together if you do.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be big or strong enough to accommodate full-size candy bars, which is a shame because they’re all I eat. I don’t have time to unwrap all those teensy snack-size candies; I need the real deal. King size? Even better. You know, just the other day, I started a petition for candy companies to start manufacturing California king-sized candy bars.

This Miniature Xbox Series X Says “Hold My Drink.”

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miniature Xbox Series X 1

Do you not like having your drink can sitting out on your desk? You could get toss your can in your desk drawer, or you could hide it inside of a miniature Xbox Series X. This tiny video game console looks just like the real deal, though it’s designed to hold a drink can instead of playing games. I suppose you could put a Raspberry Pi game system inside of it and use it to play games if you really wanted to.

miniature Xbox Series X 2

Etsy seller QTechV makes this 3D-printed mini-game system, complete with green LED lighting. It’s the right size for one of those 16 oz. energy drink cans, each of which provides enough caffeine to keep a gamer going for 18 minutes. So you’re gonna need to buy a bunch of these miniature Xboxes if you want to store a day’s worth of energy drinks.

This tabletop clothes washing machine was designed to clean your undergarments and save water!

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Underwear and socks take up a lot more space in the washing machine than we might give them credit. Most of the time, I reason with the overflow of socks by removing a bulky pair of jeans or a couple of t-shirts, otherwise, I keep the socks in the laundry basket to await next week’s load. It’s a good thing I own a lot of socks. The creators from EZVALO have created a miniature washing machine to take care of our smaller undergarments called NIX so they don’t take up most of the space or get lost in the cycle of our regular loads of laundry.

NIX is a miniature washing machine specifically built to clean, dry, and sanitize our undergarments, like underwear, undershirts, and socks, using less water in the process. The miniature washing machine features an inclined drum that promises to save water while also making it easier for users to load, unload, and keep an eye on their laundry. Additionally, NIX comes with an integrated water tank, allowing users to place their miniature washing machine anywhere they’d like without the hassle of having to attach hoses or electrical appliances to a wall outlet. Featuring a vertical-lifting door, the designers behind NIX boast its futuristic and clean design scheme. Along the top of NIX’s main door, a digital display screen allows users to denote which cycle they’d like NIX to perform all through the use of haptic sensors.

Shortlisted for 2021’s iF Design Award, NIX is a miniature laundry machine that saves water and space so that users can clean their smaller clothing items like pairs of underwear and socks. Even besides that, NIX seems like an especially convenient household appliance for more urgent washing matters like accidental red wine spills or guacamole mishaps. Yes, I’m speaking from personal experience.

Designer: EZVALO

NIX comes with a vertical, touch-and-lift door that opens to a tilted drum for easy access to load and unload laundry.

The door’s main digital display screen indicates how much time is left in a wash or dry cycle and features the machine’s on/off and pause buttons.

With an integrated water tank, NIX does not require any additional hose attachments.

Users only have to lift the machine’s door for access to its drum.

Available in optic white, NIX’s design is clean and sophisticated.

This fully functional DIY mini-television is the size of a coin! (And it has its own remote)

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Now I’m not really a small-screen person. The idea of watching Netflix on a mobile phone is cringeworthy to me, but there’s something just uniquely charming about the TinyCircuits TinyTV. Designed to be roughly 24 millimeters in width (that’s about the size of a quarter or a dollar coin), the TinyTV is a real, functioning, DIY television that even comes with its own remote control!

The TinyTV comes as a DIY kit that assembles easily in less than 5 minutes with no soldering or special tools required. It runs off a MicroSD card, allowing you to play back up to 5 hours of content (in MP4 format) on the TV’s ridiculously small screen. The TinyTV also comes along with its own TinyRemote with 6 adorable little buttons to power the TV on, change channels, adjust the volume, and even mute the television (I wonder how loud the speakers on the TV are). The TV’s 3D-printed enclosure is designed to resemble old-timey cathode-ray tube tellies from the 70s… and even though it’s printed in white filament, you can easily give it a quick paint-job with some acrylic paints. Don’t use a spray-paint can though, you might just blow the damn thing away!

Designer: TinyCircuits

Tiny Tents Let Your Cat Camp Out

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Tiny Tents are exactly that: tiny tents with all the features and functionality you’d expect to find in a regular size tent, but measuring only 18″ x 18″ x 12″ when pitched. I mean if you can even consider assembling one of these tiny things as pitching a tent. Maybe just underhand lobbing a tent, or even casually rolling a tent.

The tents, which are available in alpine green and sky blue over at REI, retail for $20 with standard features that include two zipper side doors with zipper mesh windows, a removable rainfly, tarpaulin floor, interior stash pockets “for stowing really tiny accessories,” a mesh stargazer roof, plastic tent poles with elastic connection for easy setup, and a whopping 2.25 square feet of floor space.

Obviously, the tent makes a great pet bed for small dogs, cats, and hedgehogs, or the perfect camping accessory for the action figures I still play with. I tell my wife they’re actually extremely valuable collectibles, but she knows. She knows.

Spider-Man Dangling from a Street Lamp: Swingin’ in the Rain

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As far as novelty desk lamps go, this is one of the better ones I’ve seen. The officially licensed Marvel Spider Man Streetlight LED Desk Lamp stands approximately 16-inches tall and features Spider-Man dangling from a miniature street light, which doubles as a desk lamp. Is your mind blown? Because there are pieces of mine everywhere, and my wife is NOT going to be happy when she gets home and I’m playing video games and still haven’t cleaned them up yet.

Available from online toy and collectible retailer Toynk, the desk lamp costs $60, which I actually found rather reasonable, considering a lot of these sorts of superhero collectibles require Bruce Wayne levels of money to purchase, and I’m operating on more of a Swamp Thing budget.

Spider-Man: there’s a little bit of him in all of us. And not just because we all descended from spiders, but we did and I’m writing the scientific paper to prove it. It’s called ‘We’re All Just a Bunch of Spider-People’, and it’s going to change the way humanity views our place in the world. Or get me locked up in the nut-house. Either way, I better get to make a cameo in the next Spider-Man movie.

[Toynk via Geeksaresexy]

Researchers grew a mini human heart to study fetal heart development

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A team of scientists have grown a miniature human heart model. They hope the organoid will help them better understand fetal heart development and defects like congenital heart disease. The Michigan State University researchers used adult stem cells...