It doesn't happen often, but Thanko has branched out from their standard lineup of crazy stupid USB products to make a device that is actually useful. Essentially, it is a lunchbox that is heated via USB to keep your food warm while you are commuting or toiling away at the office. The heater itself is made up of anodised aluminium with a layer of Styrofoam insulation to keep the heat from escaping. So, bravo Thanko for taking your meds for once. I suppose it won't last though. Soon you will be back to in the loony bin collecting cats and trying to sell naive consumers USB eye warmers. [Thanko via Gearlog via Ubergizmo]

The Gizmodo Gallery lineup isn't just mega gadgets like the Red One Camera and prototypes like the Ancient Apple phone concepts from Frog Design. On a recent trip to Tokyo I raided Thanko HQ for the latest and weirdest USB gadgets I could find, including this USB Tie with a fan in it and a USB heated gloves. I mean, I don't know how anyone gets through winter in NY without USB heated mittens.

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Don't you hate it when you spend a while on the computer in a frigid room and your fingers start to get ice cold? You can't take the time to warm your hands back up because your boss is breathing down your neck, but it's getting harder and harder to type by the minute because you're losing mobility to frostbite. Thanko is here to the rescue with its new USB wrist warming strap, which delivers a controlled 40°C (104°F) to heat the blood rushing to your extremities.

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Thanko's previous heated USB mousepad was a stick-your-hand-in-a-whale affair, which was fine until the inside of it started smelling like an actual whale from your palm sweat. Their latest, thankfully eschews the cover method for a bottom-up approach to warming. I can't read Japanese, but the surface thermometer claims the pad gets up to 41.2 (avg. between 40 and 45) degrees Celsius, which is 106.1 Fahrenheit. Not too bad, actually. And if that's not enough, you can combine it with a heated mouse to double your efforts. [Thanko]

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Sure, that Thanko cooling fan keyboard was a great addition to your desktop for the summer, but temperatures have gotten chillier now and we're all wondering how to keep our wrists warm. Why, with Thanko's upgraded heating AND cooling keyboard, of course! The wintertime edition has three different warming spots that'll make your hands all toasty. And if things get too hot, switch it back to fan mode to cool your fingers off. This miraculous weather-weathering peripheral is available on the Thanko website for roughly $US50. [Thanko via Akihabara News]

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Near a highway, a few hundred feet from the biggest electronics building in Tokyo's Akihabara district, sits a tiny mecca for gadget geeks. The orange store belongs to Thanko, masters of weird USB devices, and it is their first of 4 shops. The blinking raremonoshop sign tickled my eyeballs, but my geek lust was triggered in full by the wall flyers for odd gadgets printed on top of a mosaic of origami paper.

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Thanko's Sounds Live magnetic earphones aren't quite in-the ear, and they don't have a head-strap: instead these odd gizmos clip onto your earlobe and have a speaker that points roughly into your ear canal. I guess it's kinda like the the bone-conducting type headphones in that you can hear your surroundings, and if you're listening to music while jogging then the magnets mean they probably won't fall off (though your lobes may take a pounding). Plus they're designed to be decorative, acting like "real" earrings...and there's a skull and crossbones version—perfect, me hearties, since it's international Talk Like a Pirate Day. Out in Japan for around $US18. [Product via Akihabaranews]

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Here's something to put a smile on your face on a non-descript Wednesday morning: Thanko's new Code-Padlock USB protector. Does it use some funky encryption, or a digital keypad interface? No: it uses a physical code-padlocked lid that stops you from plugging in a thumbdrive if you can't work out the three-digit code. Brilliant, except that a thief will just steal the whole thing and work out the code at their leisure. So it must be aimed at stopping "casual eyes" accessing files you'd rather keep to yourself. Ah... ones with lots of pink pixels—it all becomes clear. You can of course lock up other USB devices, but you'd have to be working in a really mean office environment to need to do that. Yours for about US$9. [Akhabaranews]

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Bless those guys at Thanko—they've been wondering what else to apply fan-cooling tech to, and have come up with this keyboard that cools something you never thought needed it: your wrists. The gizmo has three fans built into the wrist-rest area of a standard USB keyboard, ready to puff sweet air at your sweaty wrists at the flick of a switch. Bizarre. And if you want one, you'd better have really hot, sweaty arms indeed 'cause this thing takes up two USB ports. It looks pretty sturdy, mind you, and is out in Japan for about US$62. [FarEastGizmos]

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Those egg-heads from Thanko have spent the best part of a year banging their large, domed cerebelli together, tackling what is without doubt the biggest question that the human race faces this millennium: how to upgrade their air-conditioned tie. And this is what they came up with—hiding the fan grille behind the fabric. Let us stop on this Friday morning (day, slow, news, a, it's, yeah. Now make a sentence out of that) and consider the evidence:

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