Japanese Coke Machine Dress

God bless the strange island people who live in close proximity to but total isolation from their neighbors, really... the Japanese, the British, the Singapurrrians, and the New Yorkers (except the Bronx, yeah yeah). I really wasn't sure what to make of this latest singularly Japanese creation, but this is one of those things that's so stupid I can't look away (like Andy Samberg punching people before they eat).

A Japanese designer has created outfits and accessories to foil muggers and bullies, like a purse that looks like a manhole cover so you can drop it in the street and recover your exploded makeup and bits of your runover cell phone it later, assuming nobody else has picked it up and found ID with your home address and your house keys (insuring you can't get in to stop them robbing you). But what's really insane is the skirt that becomes a soda machine, so you can hide inside it while the mad horde chasing you runs by blindly, having never seen an episode of Scooby Doo. This does tend to make a bit more sense in Japan, where there are entire banks of vending machines to blend in with, and nobody is likely to eye any particular one too curiously. (For more pictures of this crazy stuff, click here, or on the gif at right to animate it.)

However I can't help but shudder to think of what would happen if the disguise should fail, and given that a coke machine with feet can't stand up to more than a split second of scrutiny, this seems quite likely. At that point, you'd be wearing a bulky box-like outfit that prevents the use of your arms and blocks your peripheral vision, and are you ever in for the beating of your life. The payphone backpack for kids is particularly sad, because it requires a child to pull something over their head, turn their back, and then stay still while bullies, who are presumably FOLLOWING THEM, approach and try to contain their laughter. That may be the key problem, in order for you to put on the disguise, you have to know soembody is after you, and then somehow evade them long enough to find a hiding spot and adopt a disguise... is hiding really the best strategy at that point, or should you maybe just call a cab and order take-out while you wait? It's like that Star Trek episode where the big bad alien makes a crude knife while Captain Kirk wastes half his time and then makes a cannon with diamond ammunition from things he finds on the ground.

Honestly when I saw the demonstration video even I wanted to attack the person wearing it for putting on a fucking Halloween costume and prancing about taunting, "You can't see me!" Okay, I wouldn't actually attack a woman in the street no matter what she was wearing, and in truth I'd probably be laughing too hard anyways if I realized I'd just passsed somebody cowering inside a fake vending machine. But this also has me thinking maybe there's another angle to this, from fetish-driven Japan. I think if a woman came over and told me in this sultry voice she could take off her skirt and turn into a coke machine, I'd have to think a couple of my favorite vices were coming together in a whole new way. I'd certainly have a new perspective on the shimmering, feminine contours of the classic coke bottle... "I'm a coke machine with nothing on below the waist, come push my buttons, baby."