Great news for fans of Kakao Friends and Korea’s biggest messenger app Kakao Talk — there’s now a Kakao Friends Home Kit so you can have your favorite characters subtly represented in your home. And if you've never heard of Kakao before prepare yourself because everything about this brand is to-die-for cute, which we can say because we saw them up close and personal at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this January. These brand new smart appliances include a humidifier, a lamp, an alarm clock, an air cleaner, a sensor, a scale, and a thermometer.
Innovative tech company Nendo is teaming up with Kakao to bring you home appliances to “serve as a bridge” between the digital world of Kakao and the appliances right in front of you. The goal of the companies was to bring the function of smart home appliances (using an app, a remote control, etc.) but keeping the charm of the Kakao friends. The app that goes along with each product uses the Kakao friends to guide you when you’re using the products and “the same colors were used in the icons and the interface of the app connected to the home appliance, showing that hardware and software are linked to one another,” the website noted.
Each product has a uniform platform of a “simple and analogue white bowl” and a “silicon icon” that associates with each of the appliance’s functions. “The humidifier’s icon is vapor, the scale is a cloud — which symbolizes the desire to be light-weight — the lamp has a ray of light, the alarm clock has a small bird that chirps an alarm, the air cleaner has a flower that flutters from the wind, the thermometer is expressed through the perspiration produced from getting a fever, and the sensor is in the form of a periscope." How quirky and clever is that?
The scale literally has you stepping on a cloud and has an accompanying app that gives you feedback from the Kakao friends based on your weigh-ins (which goes directly to the smartphone and is recorded). Not sure how I feel about that one, but I guess it is similar to my Lose It! app that congratulates me for logging all my calories for the week and a successful weight loss. All my app is missing is the adorable Kakao characters.
And this lamp is gorgeous as well as functional. It can be controlled by the app on your phone, and you can change the color and brightness of the lamp, or you can simply run your finger across the dome top. The humidifier can be controlled from anywhere, just by using your smartphone, and the vapor aesthetic is pretty pleasing to the eye and cute, too. The air purifier’s app has the matching pink Apeach character who is right there on your phone as you adjust the settings on the humidifier.
If you still can’t get enough Kakao in your home (and who can blame you, they are pretty adorable), then you’ll have to check out these Kakao-themed home organization products, with everything from desk trash bins, air diffusers, household cleaners, laundry detergent, and this amazing pair of wiper slippers that could have come straight out of the Pippi Longstocking movie.
These products were a huge hit at the CES convention, but it doesn't look like they're sold in stores quite yet. So be on the lookout for them and keep an eye on the Kakao website for more information.
