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If you’re anything like me, and everyone who is anyone is, your life is missing only one thing. “Kyso,” you say, “I am or know a young lady over the age of eight who needs a cluncky pink box with which to do poorly imaged digital makeovers. The shittier and more expensive, the better.”

It’s your lucky day. This little beauty is designed for those girls who have access to $60 for a crappy old-school computer pen-and-tablet set with a digital camera in it, yet inexplicably have no computer, and therefore must use their televisions.

Want to see what you look like with purple eyeliner? Digi Makeover, a $60 digital makeup pad from Radica (www.radicagames.com), lets you try out different looks on your TV screen.

Want to see what you look like with purple eyeliner? Go to any drugstore and get some cheap purple eyeliner for a dollar. If you like it, go out and get better eyeliner.

You start by positioning the Digi Makeover’s camera about three feet from your face and taking a picture of yourself. It is a bit of a trick to line up eyes and mouth with the on-screen guides, but that is necessary to avoid getting lipstick on your cheek later on.

Golly gee, elegant and easy to use. How many times did the article’s author have to re-take pictures of himself in order to warrent mentioning that the process is “a bit of a trick”?

Elegant, easy to use, and jam-packed with memory!

A photo booth mode pastes your face into 16 picture frames, and you can save 5 pictures in memory.

Elegant, easy to use, jam-packed with memory, and easy to export your favorite images right to your… VCR?

But the only way to export pictures is to connect the device to your VCR and record the output.

Well, ok, it’s a bit of a pain in the ass. But when you see the professional results…

Professional makeup artists have nothing to fear from the Digi Makeover, which runs on four AA batteries or an AC adapter (not included). Still, the images will keep you chuckling, especially when you put a purple wig on Grandpa.

Or not.

So what we’ve got profiled here in the NYT is a game that might possibly had some redeeming value as a high-tech novelty in 1992, which was more or less when I was introduced to these awesome new things called micro-computers. Small enough to sit on a rather large desk (although the more expensive ones were small enough to put on your lap!) they had finally become affordable and ubiquitous enough that my dad was persuaded to bring one into our home. You know what would be awesome, if instead of making up your picture on TV, you could hook up the game to one of those comp-you-tors that everyone is talking about.

I can’t think of anything sillier than giving today’s tweener girl a $60 “hook up to the television and export to the VCR (tweener girl: don’t you mean DVD?)” fake makeup box when a) that girl likely has access to a pretty awesome family computer and b) $60 would have bought her a kickass sampler set of real makeup, which for obvious reasons would be way more fun.

Nice try, RadicaGames. Knock about $40 off the price and add some of that U-S-B action and maybe we can file you up there with the a seemingly endless array of Barbie video games in the “misguided and probably unprofitable but certianly lazy attempts to get those giggling gooses of girls to buy some damn electronics.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 3rd, 2006 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Brilliant Ideas, For the ladies, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.