Designed by Alissia Melka-Teichroew for AMT Studio, these vintage looking skeleton key USB drives go perfectly with your steampunk PC. They are ceramic encased memory sticks made to look like old Victorian era keys.

They hold either 2GB or 4GB. As well as using them with all your steampunk computers, they also add some style to your modern computer as well. Pretty clever idea.

Remember those key-like USB keys we showed you from LaCie earlier this month? The ones that were all like, hey I’m a key, put me on your key ring. The drives are now priced and available for shipment.

Designed by 5.5 Designers, the itsaKey, iamaKey and PassKey USB drives are now available for order and ready to be lost along with your car keys. The first two sport up to 8GB of internal capacity and the PassKey boasts a built-in microSD card slot.

Following up on their CurrenKey ultraportable flash drives, Lacie has a new storage solution that will have you losing even more keys then you already do. This one takes the form factor of…keys.

These miniature microSD card readers offer 20MB/s read and 10MB/s write speeds. PassKey supports microSDHC cards, and both iamaKey and itsaKey are avaialable with 4GB or 8GB of built-in storage. It won’t start your car or get you into your home, but it may still scratch a lottery ticket and they are shock-proof and Windows ReadyBoost-compatible.

A good way to sell drives is to repackage them with preloaded special edition movies or music content. That’s what Sony is doing with their Microvault USB flash drives. The company has unveiled a number of movie titles that will be available in their MicroVault USB drives, as well as some music.

Microvault drives range from 1GB to 16GB storage capacities. Preloaded content is available from a few popular choices such as Thriller: 25th Anniversary Edition, The Da Vinci Code and Men in Black. The special edition Thriller includes the complete re-release version of the original 1982 album, seven bonus tracks and four Billie jean videos.

If you’re going for the look of a bullet entering your laptop, this USB drive is perfect. It’s a series of awesome looking flash drives that are a collaboration between Crooks & Castles and Hellz with branding & strategic consulting firm Mojo Laboratories.

The drives have 1GB of storage capacity and come loaded with storage instead of gunpowder. These aren’t armor piercing, they’re laptop and USB port piercing. One word of warning, if your job requires you to have bullets lying around, don’t get confused and grab the wrong ones.

When you think about the French, chances are you think comedy involving mimes and baguettes dancing with their comedy god Jerry Lewis. Is that just me? Alright then. The French are doing something interesting with USB and trains. A kind of wireless easy-pass for trains. French public transportation company SNCF is getting 1,000 customers to help it test an RFID-enabled smart card that doubles as a USB drive, known as the Weneo ID Smart.

SNCF wants to expand its contactless payment system, and the plan would allow customers to plug their train passes into their PC at home. Which makes sense, because at home they can add money to their account, avoid missing trains because the train is pulling away as they rush to put money onto a card, and it probably helps with crowds as well. Schedules can also be downloaded to the card and it’s a photo ID. Once on the train, the fare would be deducted from the card by an RFID reader or an attendant with a handheld device. They’ll have to see if it’s a success first, but if so, the SNCF may want everyone using the system by 2010.

Could we really not come up with a better way to violate these animals via USB? Apparently not, and I have no better suggestions to offer as far as the placement of their uh, receptacle. Poor guys get no respect at all. Just living out USB life day after horrible day, like a having perpetual proctology exam as time slides toward infinity.

You can thank Japanese company Marubeni InfoTech. This is their line of wooden USB drives. Each features a 1GB storage capacity and you get five animals to choose from: dog, pig, elephant, hippopotamus and a swan, available in maple or walnut. They’ll cost you $73. Is there an organization for the ethical treatment of wood animals?

If you love robots like I do, you’ll notice very quickly the complete lack of robot flash drives. Where’s the robot love? Team is doing something about that with their “T-Bot R50″ robot-shaped flash drives that were shown off at the Computex event. Looks like they’ll come in 1GB,2GB,4GB and 8GB sizes. You can choose between red, white, blue or black. They have a cool retro look.