As a kid, how many times were you told to stop playing with your food? Probably a lot. Well, playing with your food on these plates is totally acceptable and even mandatory. The Food Face is a mid-size, hotel-quality, food-safe plate.

It’s time you had the freedom to play with your food. Your parents were just too uptight. Make a hat full of peas, or a beard full of corn, maybe put some carrots as the eyebrows. No price yet, but I imagine they will be available soon.

This is a great device if your thumb is brown rather than green. Consider it a cheat for becoming a great gardener. The EasyBloom Plant Sensor consists of two gadgets, a USB-enabled processor, and the sensor it plugs into that you also will stick into your soil. The sensor will clue you in on what your garden requires, telling you things like how much sun that area is getting as well as moisture, humidity etc.

After it collects 24 hours of data and chastises you about being a plant killer, plug it into your computer and it will give you valuable info what sorts of plants will thrive in your garden. You can search by color, height and other options. It’s at this point that you realize that the device is little more than a digital book of flowers that do well in your area, but it could still help those who kill plants just by looking at them.

You’re a geek and so are we. So we understand. Sometimes you just can’t keep all that love for Space Invaders to yourself. You have to slip it in her drink like a nerd roofie, hoping that it will pique her interest. Maybe she’ll ask what it is. You can explain and in the process make her a nerd too. Maybe you’ll play the classic game together.

Not very likely. She’ll probably just tell you to keep your dork ice in that Shirley Temple you’re sipping. Hey, you tried. Ice Invaders is a silicone tray that will make Space Invaders ice or let you bake your own aliens. It will be available this spring. Pretend your going pew pew pew as they melt in your girlly drink.

We first told you about Ecobee’s Smart Thermostat last October. The device claims that it will pay for it’s $385 price tag within the first 12 to 18 months of use. Now’s your chance to find out if that claim is true.

The WiFi-enabled smart thermostat, complete with ZigBee expansion slots, is now available to order from the company’s website. The cost includes the $35 access fee for first year of use. If it lives up to it’s claims, this should be a real money saver. It helps you get to know your energy usage patterns and make the necessary adjustments.

Screw a bigger boat, I think we’re gonna need a bigger cup. This is one of the more clever ice cube molds that we’ve seen since Gin and Titonic. You can feel the tension. Hear the famous shark music as you sip, always wondering if your next sip will be the one that upsets the shark in your glass.

At first glance they look like they would topple over when you put them in your drink, but if you look at the pic, you’ll see that under the fin is a sturdy base of ice that will keep everything fin-up. This may be the coolest ice cube tray thing yet.

This toaster is part of Ivo Vos’s ‘Brunch’ collection. It’s a toast catapult or trebuchet. One cool feature is that it lets you calibrate the force and angle of your toast’s trajectory. Presumably so that you can have a plate all set up in the right place. It’s one of many prototypes for kitchen equipment from the Dutch designer.

It’s all about precision. In fact, the project is intended to be a statement on perfection, precision, and order. But the important thing is this: This toaster launches your damn toast. And that’s awesome. I’m guessing we won’t see it come to market for awhile, which is a shame. Toasters were meant to function in such ways.

Sometimes you come across an idea that’s so simple, you wonder why you never thought of it. Or why no one else has until now. This one is a great and simple idea. An ice cube tray that dispenses one ice cube at a time. It’s called the Quicksnap and we’re not the only ones who think it’s a good idea.

It’s a finalist in the Royal College of the Arts design contest, and will be available later this year for single cube action at all your parties. A simple push of the green button and the cube just pops out. So, if you absolutely need to water down those drinks, but want a single cube so as not to water it down too much, you have an easy way to do it.

e-cigarettes seem pretty fashionable these days. I guess it beats being hooked up to an iron lung machine. Despite the fact that some people have a huge problem with smoking, it’s a part of our culture. We even covered a phone that looks like a carton of smokes awhile back.

Riding the wave of e-cigarettes is this electronic pipe. The Electronic Pipe will give you the taste and feel of smoking on a pipe while looking like you are solving crimes in the 19th century. You just won’t get all the negative effects of nicotine. It will give you a nice a orange glow and even a puff of fake smoke to complete the illusion.

Pearing Core Systems’ MEdiaCOre or MECO system is a digital command center/ convergence device that is basically a compact, hand-crafted cabinet for your living room. The unit runs off of a full-featured PC powered by Windows Media Center. It uses the Internet and your home’s audio, video and other automation to manage your digital life all from one place.

You can watch Internet movies and television, stream Internet radio, listen to MP3s and check out your digital photos and video. The device also helps to eliminate all of your media clutter, because MECO has two cable boxes, a wireless router, Blu-Ray and DVD-RW/CD-RW drives built right into the system, with room to integrate your own components, like iPods and game consoles.

The Roswell the Alien Wall Plaque has a few different uses. For one, it makes it look like you caught one and imprisoned it in your wall. Which is good because if a real alien shows up one night to abduct you for study, he’ll see this on your wall and hightail it out of there. Plus, he’ll tell his friends and thus you will be safe.

It’s also the sort of thing that comes in handy for scaring away unwanted house guests who like to spend the night. Just put this up in your guest room and no one will want to sleep over. It comes in three pieces: a head and two hands, so you can move them about to create the look that you want.

Is your faucet a stick or an automatic? Well, now you can have a stick shift on your sink thanks to this classy-looking design. That’s right, you can now change gears on your faucet. It’s pretty stylish and will leave other faucets in the dust.

The idea is that it would allow you to shift up the amount of water coming out of the faucet. Or down. Which is great for people looking to conserve water by staying in lower “gears,” but we can’t see how the temperature is controlled so this may be a big bust. Sure, it looks awesome, but that doesn’t count for anything if all you get is cold water.

Doing chores sucks. Ironing is probably one of the worst chores. But no one likes a wrinkly shirt. This iron should make it a little more bearable. The b-Iron 715 is a clothes iron that’s completely transparent, letting you to see your clothes while you’re ironing. This way you can watch the whole mysterious de-wrinkling right before your eyes. And you won’t burn that shirt.

Let’s just hope that it lives up to all the hype that surrounds transparent iron technology and distributes the heat evenly. Also, if it clouds up from the steam then you will be sadly disappointed. Here’s to hoping they have all the wrinkles worked out.

Scales come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes they are on your mouse. Sometimes they are on a chair. And sometimes they can be found on a toilet seat.

Which makes sense. Losing weight is hard. It might help motivate you, if you can see visually just how much you lose on the old John. Because we all know we lose some weight on the throne. Now it’s time to see just how much. Judging by that rabbit-thing’s reaction, it seems that he/she has just pinched a weighty loaf.

Remember the E-ball power strip for D & D fans? This is like that only cooler. This ezSpace UFO power strip will abduct 2 of your outlets and give you 6 in return. This UFO offers surge protection, not scorn from non-believers or even anal probe rash. It’s actually useful.

While we wouldn’t mind seeing it in more colors, we like it. And it’s only $29. Though I imagine it ceases looking like a UFO once 6 plugs are inserted. Still it’s perfect for those out of sight places where every device converges in a tangled mess.

Using the Wii-Fit’s balance board is great for some sports simulations, but it can only go so far. The Ski Home Simulator is another option for those with large bank accounts and too much time on their hands at $2285. It has features for the ski beginner, as well as more advanced users.

Apparently it’s for the PC only, meaning that you need to plug it to your PC or laptop. With 32 different courses from 18 real life venues including Beaver Lake, Lake Louise and Chamonix, these are still pretty expensive courses when you take the price into account.