Remember when you were in grade school, and the most important part of your day was figuring out whose paper airplane design flew the farthest? I remember that there was one kid who was just better than the rest of us at launching his plane. He could have thrown an unfolded piece of paper and still beat half of us. Don’t let your kids suffer through the same unfairness. Buy them the electric paper airplane launcher, so that everyone’s planes can be judged on an even playing field. It’s only $16 at Amazon, and I think it’s worth the price to save little Billy and Susie from that master plane tosser.

In a home office, cord management is always an issue. Electronics which need to be connected to the wall and to each other have the potential to create a mess of cords which becomes almost impossible to control over time. I like anything which can make that process a little bit easier, and in certain situations, this clip-on powerstrip from Belkin can do just that. The problem I see is that most desks don’t have the perfect place to clip this on. Unless you converted an old table into your desk, there’s a good chance that this is not going to work, and it’s not going to do anything to help with network cords, monitor cords, USB cords, speaker cords, mouse and keyboard cords, and on and on. You need to start somewhere, however, so if you want to tame the power cords in your environment, Belkin might have the solution.

You gotta love it when people invent and try to market utensils that are just plain unnecessary. Just for its conversation starting properties, I still sometimes pull out the pizza cutter fork that my wife gave to me for a funny gift. In that same tradition, you can now get yourself a popcorn fork, which amounts to a three pronged plastic utensil that you can use like a claw to grab a handful of popcorn without touching it. This might come from the same people who brought us the NosePocket Handkerchief, because they have a similar sounding slogan. They say that this is “the most unique utensil since the Dark Ages.” As a bonus, they build in a mini salt shaker, so that you can be sure to add a heart-stopping amount of sodium to every bite. You can buy them online in lots of 6, 12, or 24 for about a dollar a piece.

Faucet Buddy is a faucet accessory that measures and displays the amount of water used, as well as the temperature of the water. Built by designer Baek Uyeol who won a Red Dot Design Award for his effort. It’s still in the prototype stage, but I could see a decent sized market for this product in higher end homes. It appeals to safety concerns by helping you prevent scalding the little ones, and it appeals to to the environmentally friendly crowd by reminding one not to waste water. The designer even talks about adding wireless capabilities so that you can track the history of the water usage over time.

Here’s one from the why do they make that and who’s buying it department. If wiping crumbs and dust off your desk with your hand is just not working anymore, then you may need the USB vacuum cleaner from whateverworks.com. As described on the website: “Fun to use! Keeps your desk clean! Tiny retro-designed vacuum plugs into your computer’s USB port, to keep your desk and workstation dust- and crumb-free.” I think I’ll save the $20 and stick to Windex and a paper towel.

If you want your fish tank to have that little extra something to draw people’s attention, then you may be interested in GloFish. Bright zebra fish which glow under a black light, these little guys would certainly be a conversation starter. The website’s marketing materials describe them: “GloFish fluorescent fish are beautiful and unique fish that are hardy in the aquarium and as easy to maintain as any other zebrafish. GloFish fluorescent fish are available in three striking colors, including Starfire Red, Electric Green, and Sunburst Orange. They look great under white light, even better under blue light, and appear to glow-in-the-dark under a black light in a dark room!”

Sometimes a variation in a consumer product is such a good idea that it quietly takes over as the default. The wide mouth beer can, the tagless t-shirt, and the cordless telephone are some examples of that phenomenon. I don’t think that the Nose Pouch will join that list. Despite their tag line stating that this is the “newest functional innovation in the handkerchief since the Dark Ages,” I doubt their claims that “it will help prevent the spread of discharge and germs from going beyond the cloth, into the air and infecting your family and friends, fellow workers or the person standing next to you in the elevator.” In my experience, people who use handkerchiefs are able to figure out how to hold the thing in such a way so that the discharge is not leaking out all over their friends and family.

Many of us are now thinking about replacing our old tube TVs with a widescreen flat panel plasma or LCD. The problem is that it’s not completely straightforward to compare one style to the other. A specification as simple as size, for example, needs to be qualified because the screens have a different aspect ratio. Widescreens use the same diagonal measurement, but what does that actually mean when you’re watching “The Office” on Thursday night? That’s where the Display Wars website comes in. Enter in the two screens you’d like to compare, and it will give you an image representation of the relative sizes and shapes, as well as a summary of statistics. It’s interesting that if you are watching a channel that is not HD (i.e. that new widescreen TV will have black bars on the sides), you would need to have a 44 inch screen in order to have a picture as big as a 36 inch tube TV. On the other hand, the 36 inch tube TV will show widescreen content equivalent to a 33 inch screen.

Though it’s no longer in print, you can still find a copy of this children’s cookbook with the unintentionally funny name on ebay or at amazon.com. Chances are that kids will love helping out in the kitchen while looking at the pictures of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Eyore, and Piglet. And there’s no doubt that parents will enjoy the puns.