A Japanese toy company is selling plants that display written messages when they sprout. Six different messages like "I Love You" are inscribed through the plant with a laser beam. The one shown here says "good luck" in French. I want the one that bursts through its magic egg shell to proclaim, with soft green tendrils, "fuck you."
Link to BBC story (Thanks, justin), and link to more product info in Japanese on the Tomy toy corporation's website. I think the name of the product in Japanese is "mamederumon." They go on sale in February.
Update: Boing Boing reader Roy Berman says,
I saw the post you made on the Mamederumon magic beans from Japan, but after checking out the original site I realized that the BBC story doesn't capture but part of the magic. I translated it and put the text up on my blog.
Link. Cool! Now I *really* want one. Here's a snip from Roy's translation. If you inhale a nice strong hit of crack before you read it, it almost sounds like a bad translation of the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah.
Mamederumon!
The bean with a message in it is being born!The egg of Mamederumon!
From an egg a plant is born!
Exciting and thrilling!
The introduction of the egg!
Also, this UK company has been selling another version of the same "talking beanstalk" idea: Link. Here's a US company that offers "message beans." Link (thanks, Beth)
