Eliminate your insect enemies with the powers of vortexes and electricity.

You know, I’m pretty much OK with most of the common complaints about summer in Japan. Growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles predisposed me to prefer feeling hot to feeling cold, and while it didn’t do anything to condition me against the humidity, I can even see a bright side to that, as it makes for awesome-looking cloud formations and means I rarely, if ever, need a jacket at night between June and August.

The one thing that drives me crazy in summer in Japan, however, is the mosquitoes. No matter how quickly I try to shut the door when leaving or entering my apartment, the annoying insects still periodically find a way to get inside as part of their plan to drink my apparently delicious blood. When I spot one buzzing around my home, I can try to crush them by clapping my hands, but my success rate tends to hover around 20 percent. The other option is to go berserk with a can of bug spray, which may or may not actually kill the creature but will definitely leave my apartment smelling terrible.

But now Thanko, one of Japan’s leading providers of crazy gadgetry (and manufacturers of the fantastically stylish elven earphones), has another way to handle insect intruders.

The Mosquito Suction and Shock Extermination Stick may not have a name that rolls off the tongue, but it does a great job of running down the product’s key features. At the end of the rod is a fan, which can be rotated 90 degrees in either direction. The fan isn’t designed to keep you cool, though.

Instead, when the blades spin they create a vortex, so that you can use the stick to suck mosquitoes, even airborne ones, into the center of the apparatus.

Once it’s pulled past the screen that houses the blades, the mosquito is then sucked towards a metal grating with an electric current running through it, which kills the creature upon contact and also ensures that it doesn’t fall into the blades themselves, thus keeping the amount of mess you have to clean up after vanquishing your adversary to a minimum.

The Mosquito Suction and Shock Extermination Stick is extendable to a length of 83 centimeters (32 inches) and weighs 708 grams (2.8 ounces). Orders can be placed here through Thanko’s online store, where the device is priced at 2,480 yen (US$22), making this a much cheaper way to deal with mosquitoes than spending every day of the summer at Tokyo Disneyland.

Source: Thanko via PC Watch via Otakomu
Images: Thanko (edited by SoraNews24)