When you really start to think about the sheer number of gadgets in the world, it’s amazing they aren’t littering the streets and roadways like cold tech corpses. After all, we keep buying them and them throwing them out to buy another.

But we aren’t here to preach. We’re just impressed by this beautiful reminder of our consumerism in the form of sculpted cardboard gadgets. These are works of art really. They are from British designer Kyle Bean and they are really nicely detailed.

In these troubled times, you don’t want a super expensive phone with all the bells and whistles… Okay, you do, but for a moment let’s just pretend. The Disposable Pre-Paid Phone concept is one of the most basic handsets you could hope to find. The idea is that it would be affordable enough for anyone to purchase for use in an emergency situation.

Which makes sense. You would want a portable phone you can wear it around your wrist, for Dick Tracy type emergencies. How billing would work is anybody’s guess. But it looks great in Wii-white. No alphanumeric keypad here, which is lame. Sometimes in an emergency, sending text messages is a good idea.

Some of us would like to keep our eardrums in working order. To do that you can avoid concerts and the like and it also helps to have a pair of earplugs handy, but it’s not always convenient to carry them around. Unless you could fit them in your wallet somehow, like these RNID plugs from designer Shing Lo.

They even come with a set of rubber gaskets for a tight seal in your ears. Plus you can put them back on the card for storage. If these ever show up in the market, they would be pretty popular as a disposable and convenient product.

Disposable cell phones are everywhere. That’s nothing new. But disposable cells must have now reached critical mass if Bic, makers of disposable lighters for decades, is in the game. The company has teamed up with Orange France to launch their Bic disposable cellphone. It’s a prepaid phone that comes pre-charged and gives you an hour of free calls. It even comes with a SIM card already inserted, which needs to be activated to start making calls.

It’s manufactured by Alcatel and they kept it simple as the user can only make calls and send texts. You can get them in “Citrus Orange” or “Lime Green” for $80 starting August 7th in France. They probably should have thrown in standard Bic lighter for that price. It’s the least they can do. Then you would be covered for both making calls and lighting your smokes.