On my recent trip to Seattle, I wandered around Ye Olde Curiousity Shoppe for a good deal of time. YOCS is a great place for old fortune teller machines, real mummies are on display, among other unusual goods. Most of the store is now dedicated to selling tourists every imaginable item with the word, “Seattle” printed on it. When I saw the $2.95 green Space Needle that grows, I figured I could make room in my wallet for one souvenir. After purchasing my find, it went into my purse, untouched and overlooked, until today.

Today, I was cleaning out my refrigerator and found a 2 liter bottle of Coke, well past its optimum fizziness. This is a great place to grow a Space Needle, at least I hope it is. I had a place to grow it, I just had to plop it in bottle with water. I humored the manufacturer and turned the Space Needle package over to read the directions. Instructions for growing something in water seem pointless, but I needed some good breakfast reading and had already memorized the back of the Rice Krispies Box.

I was delighted to find some terrific Engrish on the back. I once had a room mate who, for a living, would translate Nintendo manuals from Engrish to English and explained to me why it occurred. Essentially, Chinese (in the case of this particular product) is so far different from English, not only in grammar, but the way that they use a completely different set of symbols. It just doesn’t translate straight into a different language seamlessly. I can only imagine that they receive products from the US and laugh identically and our mistakes.

Moving on, here is the label. Enjoy.

If you cannot read the scan:

-Put your growing space needle in a jar or container with full of clean water in room temperature. Then see its growing.

-Please note the temperature of the water is under 35 C

-Do not expect instant result as it takes up to 72 hours for fully expansion

-Take it out of the water and see its shrinking back to original size

-An educative and fun toy

And in 72 hours, we shall see how big it gets!