If you feel the same about video games as us, you miss Space Invaders terribly. Back when game play was simple, so were these characters’ charm. Even your enemies, who robotically descended upon you in formation, had endearing qualities. While reconnecting your Atari would be living in the past, you can now be reminded of the good days every time your pull out your keys with these Space Invaders.

Always ones to mix the expected with the unexpected, La tete au cube returns with more unique items for the fall, including a votive candle that burns for 48 hours and updates its progress via a bar on the side, a coat hanger/candleholder that makes it even easier to burn your house down, and precious cotton napkins that will make your picnic guest think they’re crawling with ants.

It’s been a little while since we’ve written about the surreal French gift shop, La Tete au Cube (who could forget the buddy towel or the cowboy flask, great gifts wrapped in classic French noir.) Their new items bring that same strange irony and add a little creepy to the mix. The Mistic Mirror (sic), which acts like a normal bathroom mirror until steamed up to leave behind the knife image, is a wonderfully weird way to surprise a house guest. But, it’s especially convenient for those that overstay their welcome.

This silver Walkman tape player pendant and necklace from Complete Technique is the hottest thing ever. Look at that craftsmanship. Look at the meticulous detail, down to the cassette inside. My heart is skipping! It’s only one model from the jewelry company headed by two partners in New York — one of which has a background in making fine jewelry and the other in marketing — who focus their designs mostly on the hip-hop set, with names like Mos Def, ?uestlove, Jazzy Jeff and DJ Krush among their fans. Bling is their game, but anyone who lives through music will gobble up these masterpieces if they’ve got the pretty penny to drop. Complete Technique also makes speakers studded with zirconium, 45 adapters, head phones that move, ’80s Japanese boomboxes plated in 18K gold and other customized jewelry, all equally sizzling and worth the arm and leg. If you’re interested, check out the in-depth interview Format Magazine did with their marketing director Jenn Tsang earlier this year to hear the theory behind the brand.

If hedonism at its purest still isn’t enough for you, La Tete Au Cube has a few new goods to make your bad habits even sassier. Because I’m highly supportive of free will and sarcasm (though not necessarily supportive of smoking), I’m a fan of this cigarette holder that snarkily accepts the fate of a pack-a-day lifestyle. Their limited edition cowboy-inspired flask also centers around a similarly dark style of humor that I can’t help but warm to- who really knows what else our addictions may be saving us from?

A lot of the offerings at La Tete Au Cube hold best-gift-ever potential, so if you’re looking for something with more personality than, say, a scented candle, this French gifting site may have exactly what you’re looking for.

You’ll have to excuse the light posting for today, as I’m heading back to ICFF momentarily. Before I do, though, I wanted to share some of the highlights of my filled trip on Saturday. Josh had warned me there would be a lot of “garbage” at the Javits Center (and indeed, there is) but I guess you can chalk my kid-in-a-candy store excitement up to first-timer enthusiasm. After the jump is a just a snippet of some of my favorite things from Saturday’s field trip, and I’ll be back later this evening and tomorrow with a veritable boatload of photos and stories.

If there’s someone there you think I should check out, hit me up on my Blackberry and I’ll swing by.
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La Tete Au Cube is a small design shop I found hidden somewhere between the rows of scented candles and baby accessories this past weekend at M&O. The simple witty product line caught my eye, and I found them very post worthy. My favorite product there was ‘plaid buddy‘, a blanket with a patch depicting a stick figure with his/her arm out. Perfect for placing in the back seat of your car, or on your couch– so as the designer put it, you are ‘never alone’. They also sell a beach ‘towel buddy’. The other neat product they had was what they were calling the ‘fast bracelet‘– which was a 3 pack of metal and wire made bracelets with small beads on the end packed in a condom like wrapper–really nice packaging. Fashion on the go! As I understand it, they have no distribution in the U.S…. but I think that will soon change.