Made by Sanden, the machine is thoughtful enough to dispense 6 to 7 items per 70 cranks, so it’s better if you team up with other customers and take turns at the hand-crank. Or give up and look for a human vendor.

If he wasn’t thirsty before he started the demo, I bet he actually needed the drink afterwards. I know that the machine was made for a specific situation, but it would be hilarious if a vending machine that sold junk food also had a hand-crank.

[via Japan Trends]

The Power Box measures 4.5″×4.5″×8.75″ and weighs less than 2lbs., so it’s a very portable charger. Generally speaking, our legs are more powerful than our arms, so it should be easier to produce power on the Power Box than on a hand-powered generator. Add that to the fact that it has two pedals while most hand-powered generators only have one crank and you have a more useful and practical gadget. Its only weak point is that it doesn’t have a USB port. Instead, it’s just got an (ungrounded) outlet on top. Also you can’t use it while you’re running away from zombies. Hand-powered generators win that one.

The Power Box isn’t available for order yet, but K-TOR did say on their Facebook page that they’ve already “ordered production parts and tooling” for the device. The company’s hand-powered generator sells for $50 (USD), so I’m guessing the Power Box will be significantly pricier than that.

[K-TOR via The Gadgeteer]

Just plug your gadgets into this handy hand crank charger and get to cranking. The SUPERBattery from Datexx lets you juice up your electronic gadgets anywhere, anytime by harnessing the power of your arm strength.

In emergency hand crank mode, the SUPERBattery should give you about 2 minutes of talk time on your phone for every 6 minutes of cranking. My arm is getting tired just thinking about it, but it is probably a good idea to keep something like this in your emergency kit if you go camping or even in the back of your car – just in case you run yourself off the road this Winter. As an added bonus, the SUPERBattery includes a built-in flashlight, just in case you’re stuck in the dark.

Of course if you’re not in an crisis situation, can pre-charge the SUPERBattery with the included AC adapter, giving your devices up to 4 hours of juice on a single charge. The kit includes a hand-cranked 600mA rechargeable battery pack, and adapters for over 1,200 different mobile devices including media players, cell phones and handheld video games.

You can find these over at Compact-Impact for just under $30 USD.

It may not be the prettiest media player ever made, but that’s because it needs room for the mechanical device that converts your energy into power. One minute of winding will give you about forty minutes of play time.

It’s not the fanciest player either, but it does offer a 1.8-inch color screen, and can play both audio and video clips. There’s even an FM radio and an emergency LED flashlight on board. It comes with 2GB of internal memory, but is expandable using an SD memory card.

Designed to be both eco-friendly and pragmatic for situations like camping and hiking, the crank powered Baylis MP3 player will set you back a pricey £170 (about $345 USD) from the Ethical Superstore. I guess that being environmentally-correct isn’t always economically-correct.

[via Hippyshopper via Tech Digest]

Elekit’s OTOKIBAKO plays music data from strips of paper with black and white bars on them. You can generate your own music strips using the provided software (Windows only.) The music box has a 3 octave range, including half-tones, and comes with 15 pre-installed melodies and 8 sound samples (you can hear them here by clicking on the little icons.) And while turning the crank feeds the music to the player, it still needs batteries to generate sounds.

Remember, this is a build-it-yourself kit (assembly time is estimated at 5 hours,) so you’ll need to feel comfortable soldering and assembling electronics. Also, the music software is in Japanese, but it looks pretty self-explanatory. Each OTOKIBAKO kit will set you back