mimo USB flash memory Jewelry

Everyone and their mother’s sister’s boyfriend’s cousin have a thumb drive. Heck, we’ve all seen our share of donut and sushi themed drives. Honestly, this kind of gadget is usually considered a gag gift in my book. But last week I found a USB drive that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to use as a real gift.

I was pretty drawn in when I saw these displayed in a Hong Kong Hobby store and stumbled in to ask to borrow units for demo (it took a while to man up, I was asking for free jewelry in a very girly store). Sure enough they sent me a few samples after asking for my card and a whole lotta questions. I am pretty surprised that no one have posted about them before, as it seems their marketing ads looks pretty neat and uh…appetizing:

I gotta hand it to these guys for mounting the drives onto the pendent-type pieces: pop-out style! The “snap” and the feel of the device were pretty solid. The reader itself can actually be pulled out for swapping microSD cards.

Here’s a video of my demo with the pop-out action. When I said “memories” I meant microSD cards (FOB moment).

In the video you’ll also see another type of non-pop out USB flsh memory that they have. Again it’s a simple microSD reader, but the elaborate measures they take to actually make this look like jewelry is commendable.

Here is what a more natural strawberry flash memory looks like:

Again these seem to be only available at this Hobby store in Hong Kong, but from their website (www .mimo.com.hk) they do have a link to their Amazon store, which ships internationally. For a price range of HK$328-HK$398 /42-64USD (2GB versions), they don’t even come near to the cheapest 4GB thumb drives you can buy online, but for a piece of functional jewelry (deep down, don’t we all want our jewelry to function? Com’on!), this makes a pretty solid gift.

PROS
It’s not a soft plastic food replica
Looks like jewelry/keychains girls would like
USB 2.0 adapter with swappable memory
microSD is a very popular media (most phones except sony-ericssons use them)

CONS
The adaptors are snug and require some effort to pull out

Tad expensive if you only need a simple flash drive
It doesn’t seem like they have anything for guys (unless you’re the Macaron type)
You can only buy them online in the states