NES drinking

Still searching for that perfect Christmas gift? Well, look no further – I give you the gift of the century!

Regardless if you’re spending the holidays with your boyfriend or girlfriend, long lost family or drunk in-laws, crazy cat ladies or that weird hippie neighbor who “doesn’t believe in material possessions” this is the obvious gift of choice!

As kids of the 80tees we all know what a NES is, remember that special moment when first unboxing the system, and although we ourselves never fought him, we all knew that one guy who reached and beat Mike Tyson in Punch-Out. We know how to find the warp-zone in level 1-2 in SMB, we can all recite the Konami code in our sleep, and we all know the theme to the Moon in Duck Tales. Long story short - we´re all of the NES generation.

As we have grown up, we may have left the NES behind, but the nostalgia never leaves. And as we beers and whiskey replaced soda as the drink of choice, so must also these new bereaves adapt to our living memories. Enter the extremely stylish Ink Whiskey Concealable Entertainment Flask – the first container that truly matches your retro gaming fandom.

Matt Cornell, the inventor behind the flask and founder of Ink Whiskey LLC, wanted to make this canteen a concealable flask instead of a flask that was just shaped differently. He wanted the product to look and feel exactly like the game cartridges we all grew up with. Therefor it looks like an NES game cartridge, right down to the classic dull-gray color.

Outside of being a handy little way to be sneaky, the team also created some awesome alcohol-themed parody art labels of some classic video games that we all know and love. Here's a quick sneak peak at the five labels available to choose from:

The funding goal for this KickStarter project has already been topped off. You can get a Drunk Hunt-labeled flask for $15 or choose from one of the other labels at the $20 level. So, go ahead: Raise your flask to retro gaming and make a toast to the perks of adulthood.

How prudence encouraged drinking

Systembolaget is a government owned chain of liquor stores in Sweden. It is the one and only retail location allowed to sell alcoholic beverages, other than bars and restaurants. With this great power comes great responsibility, and as such, one of the main focuses of Systembolaget's advertisements is the side effects of drinking, and the encouragement of drinking moderately.

Therefor Systembolaget developed an app to help casual consumers keep their bending under control. The app encourage its users to track their consumption by entering his/her age and weight, and then type and amount of alcohol, and the app would return a calculated blood-alcohol level.

The app went viral, was downloaded by the thousands, and was an instant hit - just not the type of hit that Systembolaget wanted. Turned out Systembolaget had missed their core target audience - young men. In an instant young men ages 20 - 30 could compete with each other on who was the drunkest. Actually compete. With quite accurate results. And how did you win? As with any game; by having the highest score.

No one was reported dead as a result of this, but over consumption with hospitalization as a result did increase dramatically within the "target audience".

Where did Systembolaget go wrong? The answer is quite simple; they had not accounted for the power of gamification. It turns out, even unwanted gamification will occur if there is an opportunity for it to occur. A quick user workshop would probably have revealed this flaw in the design, but this was probably never conducted.

Writing this the app is still live and available for your iPhone or Android.