We hope everyone has a very happy Halloween this weekend! May your Halloween festivities be filled with frights and sounds beyond your imagination. Everyone at the office had a ball with our Costume Contest, which included Lady Gaga, a cup of Starbucks coffee, and a blast from the past with the Teletubbies. Needless to say, we had a day full of laughter and shenanigans. Enjoy your haunts!

From left: Lady Gaga, Dr. Zombie, Referee, Angry Bird, Starbucks coffee, Mom + Baby

Minh and Quan as Teletubbies

Nick and Kevin as Teletubbies!

Wow, London really loves their vending machines. This is the second vending machine we’ve heard about that sells shoes. And they’re both located in London.

The first vending machine we heard about sold running shoes and sneakers. This one, from a company called Afterheels, sells comfortable ballet flats aimed at the club-going crowd. The idea is that if a woman is out dancing all night in her fancy heels, her feet will start to hurt badly. Afterheels flats will allow that woman a chance to change into something much more comfortable. On top of that, the flats come with a small duffel bag to store her original pair of heels..

A pair of Afterheels flats goes for roughly $10 USD. Both the flats and the duffel bag are made from recyclable materials. The flats are waterproof and offer great protection from typical club hazards such as broken glass. They also come in a variety of colors.

Check out this video showing you how you can uncork a bottle of wine using nothing but a wall and your shoes (and it looks like something with a flat heel would work best). It’s really neat, although I’m not exactly sure in what situation you might want to crack open a bottle of wine but not have a corkscrew. It kinda seems like it’s designed for drinking on-the-go, haha. Whatever the situation, it’s certainly a handy maneuver.

London has revealed the official mascots for the 2012 Olympic Games in London and they’ve caused a stir of reactions. The two mascots, Wendel and Matlock, were developed with help from a children’s author. They have one eye to represent a camera lens into the world. And the lights on their heads are a nod to iconic London taxicabs. Personally, I do think they look a little bit weird to me but so do many children’s characters (I know this is an outdated reference but the Teletubbies come to mind) and children seem to love them just fine without my approval.

Check out the video below. What do you think: are the 2012 Olympic mascots super cool or super creepy or somewhere in-between?

Continuing with the “shoe car” theme of this week’s Weird Shoe Wednesdays, here’s an interesting video I found where two designers make a model car out of shoe boxes. Puma commissioned The Wilson Brothers, a design duo from Britain specializing in auto parts, to make a model Formula One race car out of Puma shoe boxes. This was done to kick-start the opening of a new Puma store in Chicago. See the team in action in the time-lapse video below.

Check out another video below where Puma had its Ferrari-branded shoes and clothing turned into an F1 car as well. Continue Reading…