Bandai Water Bottle Toys Offer All The Cuteness Of A Waterborne Parasite, None Of The Diarrhoea

Here’s a Japanese cultural phenomenon you’ll probably have to strain to understand: small toy creatures that float around in water bottles like captured alien parasites. Odd? Definitely. Adorable? Kind of.

The toys appear to be passive, in that they aren’t motorised, and rely on the micro-tides in your water bottle to propel them—along with their waving, limp tentacles—to and fro in your water bottle, and at six dollars they’re hardly expensive. On thing: although you can be fairly comfortable that these little guys won’t lay eggs in your intestines, it seems like we’ve got a sort of ship/bottle scenario here. If they’re small enough to fit into your Evian bottle, aren’t they small enough to come back out and choke you to death? [Bandai via Newlaunches]