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Best Use of an LED Yet (Eating Children)
Posted by Mark Wilson at 11:00 AM on September 30, 2008
Is it still called a Halloween costume if you wear it all year long? Regardless, this anglerfish mask utilises an LED to entertain friends, distracting them before it opens wide and engulfs their head a la mutant symbiote. OK, we might have presented that explanation without complete factual accuracy. There are actually a number of LEDs that light up before the mask bites your friends' heads off. So it looks pretty cool in the dark:
Hammacher Schlemmer's Digital Camera Swim Mask integrates an underwater digital camera into a swim mask--two things that have belonged together ever since Man decided that Woman should wear little to no clothing when they're in the water. The on-board 5-megapixel camera goes down to 15 feet and can take up to 30 pictures in its 16MB memory. You can expand that with a microSD card (no size limitation specified) in order to record more than 52 seconds of video as well. There's an LED inside the mask that tells you which mode you're in, but the whole thing requires two AAA batteries to operate. It's only US$99, and can be used in snorkeling or just at the pool. You can bet your arse we're testing one soon. [
This specially-created one-off steampunk gas mask was made from leather, brass, and a Soviet-era gas mask. What's special about this isn't that it looks incredibly creepy and incredibly cool, it's that it looks kinda similar to that 
There's a Lucid Dream Machine sleeping mask on Instructables that pulses LEDs in your eyelids four hours after you fall asleep, waking you up just enough to notice your dreams and control their outcomes. The mask requires a fair bit of soldering and programming experience, so it isn't for DIY luddites like me. Which is good, because my sleep is too precious and my dreams are too weird to want one of these anyway. [
This "Mask of Emotion" was made at the Hongik University in Korea, which explains why their emoticons are very Asian, as opposed to the more :'( style us westerners use. It's supposed to be hide your personal emotion while displaying whatever one you choose, which is limited to happy, kinda happy, very happy, sad, another kind of sad, and angry. Don't expect to see anyone wearing this on the street unless you're roaming the streets of Hongik University. [
When the future goes to crap in the next 10 years or so, and anarchy rules as humanity falls into a deep, dark pit of despair, this alternate reality mask concept from Frog Design will be there to soften the blow. Invoking mental images of cowed sheep, Aldous Huxley's soma and even the Matrix, Frog Designs describes its FrogConcept mask as an escape for the doomed people of the future, complete with a "re-skinned" reality.
Are your allergies so severe that a Claritin has no effect? The Japanese have a solution, and it involves shoving round pieces of plastic up your nose to block out allergens. It may seem unorthodox, but as the lady at the clinic keeps telling me, prevention is much more effective than cures. We'll stick to pills, thanks. [
The popularity of the hideous 
Die cast metal. That was a stamp of approval all premium toys in the 80s received. But not now. And if there is a modern set of toys that deserves to be metal, its the official line of Hasbro made IRON Man toys: an action figure, nerf machine gun and mask/repulsor glove combo. He's not called Plastic Man for a reason, you dolts! Was metal cheaper then? Were there one too many cases of schoolyard bludgeoning with imported Voltron? I don't know and I'm too lazy to look it up, but in any case, these plastic Iron Man toys, which at first disgusted me, actually came out all right. Begrudgingly, I will agree that plastics are the future.
A poisonous green cloud approaches. To your left, your scared wife and young son, trembling in one another's arms. To your right, three Diddo Velema gas masks complete with Gucci and Luis Vuitton detailing. You realise that the masks are probably just a pointed artistic commentary of the violent, consumer world you live in. But it's still not worth putting a haughty, overpriced purse on your head.
