This blog believes that there are a lot of people in the world who simply haven’t got enough things to do with their time. Maybe it’s because I’m one of those people who likes being busy or maybe because my diagnosis is actually correct. I’ll let you be the judge of that one…

One set of people who evidently didn’t have enough to do on one particular day some years ago was The Oakland Toy Lab. Because they managed to come up with the most pointless idea since someone at Colgate in the 1980s said “I know, let’s introduce a ready meals range, with meals like Colgate Lasagne”.

They created the tooth phonograph.

Yep. It’s exactly what it says on the tin.  You get two pencils and use one to spin the vinyl record and another to listen to what’s on the record. And if you think I’m joking, here’s a full set of instructions on how you could do it yourself. Although I’d honestly worry about the sanity of anyone who willingly wanted to.

It all reminds me of the last episode of British comedy Blackadder. It’s the first world war, and they’ve been told they’re leaving the trenches tomorrow – going over the top to a near certain death at the hands of enemy gunfire. Blackadder recalls how men would previously try to get out of the war by sticking a pair of underpants on their heads and two pencils up their nose to convince everyone they’d gone mad.

These tooth phonograph people are well and truly up at that level of bonkers…

By The Editor

Editor-in-chief at Amateur’s House.