We all need some sort of alarm to claw ourselves from the depths of sleep, but for many of us an incessant digital beep is not the sound of choice. In steps the iPod Alarm Clock to save the day. Now you can easily set your alarm to wake you with whatever your favourite song of the moment is - though perhaps not ‘Wake me up before you go,go’ - there are limits after all. You can easily set the alarm on your iPod to wake you with a specific Playlist, Album or Song, the Alarm Clock has an all important nine minute ‘Snooze’ (i.e. leave me the hell alone, this dream is more important than punctuality) function, and is adjustable so that it will fit more or less the whole family of iPods. It looks like a funked up traditional alarm clock, and the speakers are in the ‘bells’ on the top of the unit. It’s mains powered, so you’ll have no flat battery or recharging problems, and we reckon it’s the alarm clock for the iPod generation. Wake up to something more tuneful than a bell or a beep, and considerably less depressing than the news.

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Key chains and bag chains have become the must-have fashion accessories for the jet set and propeller set alike. Weird dolls and bizarre Japanese characters are all very well, but you can’t exactly engage with them much, which is where this dinky mini Digital Photo-frame key ring steps in. With 8MB of internal memory and Luddite-friendly software, this neat piece of electronic chic will hold and display up to 31 of your favourite photos. Camera phones, apart from being about as useful as wings on a chicken, will only display the terrible pictures you managed to take on the phone itself, and not your masterpieces from home and hols that you shot with a real camera.

The Digital Photo Frame Keyring has a very good quality screen, and you can choose from manual shuffle or automatic slide show to show-off your snaps at the click of a button wherever you are. The internal battery will charge from any USB port, so simply plug it in when you’re at your desk for a juice up. Transferring them to and from your key-ring is simple whether in a PC or Mac. Now you’ll always have snaps of your hols, your partner, your pet or your kid to hand, without having to drag your camera about with you.

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These are all very Blade Runner meets Minority Report. Basically these space age shades are your very own take anywhere 50 inch movie screen. Weighing in at just 68g, ezVision Video specs plug into your iPod Video or any portable video/movie/DVD player and screens your movies in such a way that it seems as though you’re looking at a huge screen. They allow you to zone out from the world around you and get right into the movie, slide show, or whatever. There are retractable headphones that are built into the arms of the specs, so you can truly plug-in and zone-out. Watch movies in bed without disturbing your better half, chill out on the train in front of a top film, or plug in in-flight and free yourself from those horrible little seat-back screens. They have an 8 hour re-chargeable battery, an integral volume control, and come with adaptors to connect to iPods (and we tried it successfully with the new Zune player too) and DVD players. When you can’t get to the cinema, bring the cinema to you.

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Bicygnals, you may be forgiven for thinking this is about listening to Lisa Minnelli show tunes in an A&F T shirt, but you’d be wrong. They are in fact the cleverest thing to be invented for a bicycle since, oh I don’t know, handlebars? The reason bicycles have handlebars is because, not unsurprisingly, you kind of need your hands to steer (which on the whole has nothing to do with American cattle), and handlebars do a pretty good job of it. This is all very logical, and seems to have caught on, which is good, but there is a flaw. When you need to turn left or right, you need to let people know, which means lifting one hand off your steering wheel (so to speak) and halving your control. Added to this lack of control is the fact that on a busy road, with those horrid car things zooming about, the only thing to let them know what your doing is one frail arm flapping about, which at 30mph on a rainy night is more or less invisible to an alert car driver, let alone a tired one. Solution, indicators! It’s been tried before, but the Heath Robinson inventions of the past have been rubbish, whereas Bicygnals harness the joy of wireless technology and the coolth (?) of contemporary design. They clip on and off your bike with ease, and even clip together and have a carry pouch for when you’re not biked up. A simple flick of your thumb gets both the front and rear signals winking away without a single wire between them. Brilliant concept, glorious design, simple, clean, efficient and really rather clever. Keep your hands where you need them and be seen. Oh and of course they’re really rather cool.

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Think of the 80s and you probably think of legwarmers, bouffant hair-don’ts and video games. Us? We think of Tamiya RC cars. And that’s not because we spent most of the decade fiddling with them (even though we did). It’s because two of Tamiya’s greatest ever off-road kit cars have been reissued.

 Let’s off-road with the Lunch Box monster truck!
These high-performance, build-’em-yourself classics are just like the ones you saw whizzing across muddy lawns, clambering up hills and splashing through puddles in years gone by. Forget toytown cars that only work indoors, Tamiya’s mucho macho rechargeable babies can handle any type of terrain

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Speedboats are brilliant, aren’t they? Because as well as flitting across the water with the greatest of ease they conjure up glam images of Monaco, Miami Vice and David Hasselhoff’s hairy chest (or is that just us?)

Sadly, in order to own one of these sleek machines you need to be either A) incredibly wealthy, B) an ex-winner on Bullseye or C) one of Capt’n Birdseye’s arch enemies. Which is a shame because there’s nothing quite like captaining your very own speedboat across the beautiful briny sea. Except of course captaining your very own remote controlled speedboat across the local pond. And that’s where the Stealth Speedboat comes in.

This large, ominous-looking vessel is frighteningly fast and makes other battery-powered RC boats look about as threatening as a soggy fishcake. Bearing more than a passing resemblance to the Batboat, the twin-motor Stealth has got speed written all over it (not literally, that would look silly) and its satisfyingly sexy aerodynamic lines help it achieve speeds of up to 30 km/h.

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‘Just the good ol’ boys, never meanin’ no harm, beats all you’ve ever saw…’ If you’re old enough and geeky enough to remember that song, you’ll know that the real star of the Dukes of Hazzard wasn’t Bo, Luke, Flash the dog or even Daisy’s perfectly formed…erm, jeep. No, the star of this so-bad-it-was-brilliant slice of 80s TV was the good ol’ General Lee.

Seemingly indestructible, this souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger roared its way through each goofball episode (and the frankly disappointing 2005 movie) like grits through a goose. It could even leap through the air every time it hit a bump. And now, thanks to your Lost Sheep-lovin’ buddies here at the Firebox ranch, you can yee-haa your way across the county in this fully-functioning, R/C version of one of rubbish TV’s greatest vehicles.

 Working headlights
The General Lee R/C Car is an exact replica of the fantastically orangey ve-hi-cle driven by them pesky Duke boys in the TV show and movie. Ready to run, this beautifully-built car travels forwards, backwards, left and right, and boasts a nifty ‘turbo-boost’ function so you can outrun Enos, Cletus or any other suggestively named deputy sheriff. It even has working headlights so you can run moonshine into Chickasaw County after dark.

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It takes genuine talent to outshine an acting juggernaut like David Hasselhoff. But, unbelievable though it may seem, the Hoff was once upstaged by a car. And it wasn’t just any old car, it was KITT, or to give its full title, the Knight Industries Two Thousand.
This sleek, customised Pontiac Trans-Am was impervious to attack, could cruise at 300mph and was loaded with hi-tech armaments. It could even talk, albeit in an incredibly camp, condescending voice. And now, thanks to your hairy-chested friends at the Firebox Foundation, you can own a fully-functioning, R/C version of one of rubbish TV’s greatest vehicles.

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Before computers took over the world, Etch-A-Sketch featured the most gawped at screen in gaming. And that’s pretty impressive for a relatively primitive device used for drawing blocky houses with smoky chimneys and outlines of skyscrapers. (Well that’s all we could manage).

 Shake and start again!
But punters just couldn’t stop twiddling those satisfyingly chunky knobs and Etch-A-Sketch is now an all-time classic. And classics of this quality most definitely deserve a place in your collection. Whether you’re new to Etch-A-Sketch or a veteran twiddler in need of a fix, this magical, take-anywhere rectangle is guaranteed to keep you occupied for hours on end

The second you start fiddling with Etch-A-Sketch the memories will come flooding back. You’ll be writing joined-up words, drawing bolts of lightning and shaking away suggestive linear creations in no time. Indeed, we remember when they used to give these away as prizes inside Crackerjack (ask your parents). And if that’s not a good enough reason to get Etch-A-Sketch-ing, we don’t know what is.

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Here at Totally Tacky we love funfairs. Sadly they’re not quite what they used to be. These days a trip to the fairground involves a muddy slog around local wasteland littered with rickety rides manned by chariot-twirling wideboys doing their darndest to make punters heave. Add to this the heady aroma of fried onions, cremated candy floss and raw diesel and you’re looking at a great day out. Not!

 Maybe we’re reminiscing with rose-tinted glasses, but we remember when fairs were all about colourful carousels, whimsical steam organs and blokes with wax moustaches flogging miracle hair elixir. Or maybe we’ve been watching too many ancient Dick Van Dyke movies.

The point is, retro-fairgrounds rule. And no funfair would be complete without a good old fashioned Candy Grabber. And it’s with this very thought in mind that we ask you to roll up, roll up and feast your eyes upon this gorgeous model.

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