Alan lubin lets the toy decide

Nothing for ages and then two come at once.. I’ve been busy of late but this awesome little advert prompted me back into action.

I’m assuming that it came from Japan. It certainly came from a Japanese person who must have captured it off the telly. If only our telly in the UK was a cute and cuddly as this.. The thing I like best is the tune - this could be the most annoying yet compulsive tune of all time. Move over “The Birdy Song” as the Unazukin song has arrived. Watch it twice and see if you don’t spend the rest of the day humming it. In fact why not go mad and learn the words too. I have attempted to translate the lyrics based on absolutely no knowledge of Japanese and as far as i can work out they are:

“Unazukin evil Unazukin.. She is Be-al-ze-bub
Unazukin scarey Unazukin.. She’ll eat your kids alive”

if anyone knows better then please feel free to comment:

The next post will be following shortly. The advert invigorated me enough to attempt another Unazukin experiment. After successfully inventing an Unazukin cocktail - I decided to make some Unazukin soup. Again I dragged Una around a supermarket and allowed her to chose ingredients. Not M+S this time either i’m afraid. I thought I would attempt a budget soup for all the students and fellow designers that might be reading this. So I allowed Una to compile the ingredients by choosing them from the tinned fruit and veg isle at my local Asda. You are probably wondering if it possible to make a gourmet soup that way. I will know later on tonight. Although my instinct tells me that any soup containing both tinned ham and peaches is likely to have limited appeal.

Ok - just to recap. I took Unazukin into Marks and Spencers and allowed her to choose random ingredients which would be mixed in order to create an official Unazukin cocktail. As expected she chose some odd things. Specifically the yoghurt smoothie reacted with the fizzy mango juice and curdled in a pretty unappetizing manner. Since it is a cocktail I took the liberty of adding a pretty liberal splash of vodka.

It took a little longer to edit and upload than i thought but here it is.. Without further a do, I give you the cocktail that I am calling “The Un-digestion”

How did it taste? Well you know how when you mix paints and you put say, yellow with blue - you get green. And then you add a little yellow - you get a vibrant lime colour. And then you add red and suddenly you start to get a muddy brown colour that from now on is just brown no matter what you add to it. Well this drink was like that. It tasted of everything and nothing. And the yoghurt and fizzy mango juice gave it the textural appeal of a pint of month old milk that had been left in the sun.

I don’t normally go to M+S - I can’t really afford it. But they have the most bizarre range of soft drinks there and I figured that in order to invent a cocktail that had never been invented before - it would be simplest of all just to choose from some unlikely ingredients.

I walked over to the chiller cabinet and subtley asked Unazukin to start choosing our ingredients. There are plenty of places in my home town where nobody would bat an eye to a thirtysomething male consulting an eggshaped toy on what to drink. M+S isn’t one of them.

Working from top left to bottom right, I would point to a drink and repeat the words “this one” as quietly as I could - but loud enough for Unazukin to hear and respond. I won’t lie to you - I did get some odd looks. But somehow the fact that I was wearing sunglasses somehow made me feel a little less vulnerable and I managed to brave it out.

I carried my haul over to the counter. I was served by a hugely overweight Spanish girl. I thought that it was a little bit unfair that M+S made her wear a t-shirt with the tagline “Simply Food” emblasoned across the front - it almost looked as if it was there in order to pre-empt any questions about her impressively large frame. It reminded me of the few occasions that i’ve been into Macdonalds and seen their crew of spotty teenagers earning minumum wage serving thrombosis to chavs. They scurry around sweating and frying their miserable lives away whilst being forced to wear a badge proclaiming “I’m Loving it”. You have to admire Ronalds twisted sense of humour. Anyway I digress..

The drinks that Unazukin chose were as follows:

Still water blended with natural strawberry and guava flavour.
Apple, melon, strawberry and Kiwi “fruit in a bottle”
Apple and Kiwi “fruit in a bottle”*
Diet sparkling Alphonso Mango and Passionfruit
Vanilla bean yoghurt smoothie**

* this seems like a strange choice to me as it pretty much replicated the one before it - however Unazukin chose both and I have to go with her superior brain.

** i’m no cocktail expert but my initual instincts tell me that yoghurt and fizzy drinks are possibly a bad combination.

I am off to mix this cocktail now and will report back with my findings.

Meanwhile entertain yourself with these awesome additions to the Unazukin battle from the awsome talent of DeViL - somebody give this guy a job if he doesn’t have one already!

Nice to see a good old fashioned Goatse amongst that lot - Mr DeViL, I take my hat off to you sir. You are truely old skool.

Ok. I’ve been away. Sorry i’ve left you hanging and for anyone that was worried that this toy had got me killed - worry no more. At least you had the cute game to keep you occupied - btw if you want to play it again it can now be found in the stuff section of the site. The beauty of letting a toy decide your destiny (and being able to book last minute holidays online, without thinking through the consequences and after a night on the beer) meant that me and AG just had a two week holiday in Svoronata on the Greek Island of Kefalonia. I didn’t have time to blog about it before we left as it was a mission to get everything sorted in time - including getting the holiday from work (very unimpressed about it) and convinding AG that I was just spontanious rather than mental.

The place we went to was nice -and considering the price we paid the holiday was a steal. The hotel was brand new and they reckoned that they’d not been sure if it was going to be ready in time and so hadn’t been able to take booking until very late.

Whilst i was away there have been some awesome additions to the Unazukn Battle. This dark little offering is from Gavin Palmer and shows what many believe to be the real face of the Unazukin.