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Meet The Weirdest Kickstarter Project Ever

by Clarissa-Jan Lim

As a fundraising platform for entrepreneurs, artists and noble causes, Kickstarter allows for people to crowdfund a dream to make it a reality. But being open to any kind of project — within the boundaries of the law, I am guessing — the website also becomes an enabler of very strange enterprises. Cue this Kickstarter project, The Cool Baby, which lets you drink in public from the somewhat realistic head of a fake baby.

Admittedly, the first few seconds of watching the video to this Kickstarter project left me incredibly confused. A visual guide to "When and How to Use The Cool Baby," the video shows when using The Cool Baby is most appropriate. And in the spirit of the product itself, the video is straight up weird. Featuring a shoddily-stubbled man gulping — super loudly, I might add — from a doll baby's head as he goes about his routine while staring very intently into space most of the time, it's set to the narration of an empty, soulless, horror movie-esque voice.

It's hard to describe to how weird the video is — it's like David Lynch-weird — so you'll definitely have to watch it yourself.

If the video clears nothing up, the project's description sheds a little more light on the project. Created by Simon Phillon — whose resume on his website is pretty incredible in itself — The Cool Baby is described as:

An expressive, customizable, hands-free beverage insulator that looks like a baby. Drinking in public is now adorable.

Seeing as the baby's head twists around creepily, "adorable" might be the wrong word to use — but it would undoubtedly come in handy on the subway or at the park, as other people smile at your fake sleeping baby while you sip from your its head, silently appraising yourself for purchasing this remarkable example of human innovation.

Only slightly over $9,000 has been pledged to the project's asking of $70,000 — which is a lot, but Phillon explained that manufacturing would be complex. While The Cool Baby, if successful, will only come in Caucasian for now, rest assured that Phillon intends on creating more diverse kinds of Cool Babies in the future:

Because of lack of resources in this first round, you're going to be seeing a lot of sleeping, caucasian babies. After this thing is funded and I get a factory re-tooled and working with me, I'll have all different kinds of baby races, baby dispositions, baby sexual orientations, and baby IQ's. Sky's the limit. Anything you ever wanted out of your progeny.

The project will only be funded if all $70,000 is pledged by Feb. 28, leaving us mere days to make this become a reality — which seems highly improbable, given that that's a lot of money — so I'd like to make a personal plea to the Internet to please, for the love of all that is holy, make this happen. Let's make a Cool Baby.

Image: Simon Phillon/Kickstarter (3)