The Hangover: CES 2025’s Wackiest and Wildest Gadgets

The world’s largest annual tech show, CES, is over and done with. Now that we’ve brought you all the news of the most sensible bits of technology that’ll make life easier and the world a slightly less confounding place, we can dive into the gadgetry that’ll introduce gloriously bonkers tech into the world.

From a spoon that shocks you to a robot with an arm, these are the things that made us smile, chuckle, and furrow our brows, all from Las Vegas, a place where everything always totally makes sense and the outlandish is never welcome.

Jizai mi-mo robot table

Because it’s not enough that you painfully run into your table at night when you’re locking up the house, Japanese robotics company Jizai has invented a table that can run into you. The Mi-Mo is a robot that’s also a six-legged table. It’s got a Pixar-lamp for a head, a rather fetching real-wooden table top, and yes, of course it can walk.

Sci-fi movies have taught me to anticipate a lot of things. 2001: Space Odyssey had iPad-like tablets, and Minority Report had Alexa-liked voice assistances, but robotic, walking nightstand was never on my bingo card. Jizai is light on details, and a website will be coming soon, per Mashable.

yukai mirumi robot

Beyond looking adorable, the Mirumi robot has no practical function. You clip it onto something—a purse, backpack, whatever—and it just hangs out. Oh, and from time to time it’ll spontaneously turn its head to look at somebody and turn its head in a way that “express its curiosity, bashfulness and other baby-like qualities and emotions.”

According to Yukai, it’s “is designed to recreate the joy of encountering and interacting with a human baby.” It uses an “internal distance sensor” to scan its surroundings to detect people to look at. There’s also an inertial measuring unit inside to detect when it’s moved or somebody taps it on the shoulder.

kirin electric salt spoon

What’s an electric salt spoon? Why, it’s an enormous, battery-powered spoon that zaps your tongue with electricity to trick your brain into thinking you’re tasting salt, naturally. D’uh. What else could it be? Who’d have thought that after generations of indoctrinating kids to not stick their fingers in electrical outlets, we’d be enticing them to shock their own tongues?

Ok, so the current is weak. Nobody is getting blown across the room, Back to the Future-style. The idea is that people can use the spoon in lieu of salting their food, thereby cutting back on sodium and living a bit healthier without forfeiting the godly deliciousness that is salt. The Electric Salt Spoon went on sale in Japan in May 2024, but Kirin is releasing it onto the North American market sometime this year. People with pacemakers or “other medical devices” shouldn’t use the spoon, per Kirin, which also seems like a safe bet.

Yukai Nékojita FuFu

Would you pay $25 for a fan disguised as a cat to sit on the rim of your mug and blow on your coffee to cool it down? Yukai is wagering that there’s a market for it in Japan, where it’ll launch sometime this year.

“The robot generates cool ‘breath’ with an internal fan, and uses the special algorithm, ‘Fu-ing System,’ to randomize its blowing strength and rhythm in the way humans might,” says Yukai. Could you just blow on your tea, coffee, or soup? Of course. But that wouldn’t be very CES of you.

roborock saros z70 robot vacuum

Give Roborock a hand, folks. They’ve managed to make robot vacuums more interesting than they’ve been since, well, they were invented and the whole concept was novel. From the moment it was shown at CES, it gripped our attention with its two-pronged hand, which can pick up and move objects such as socks, small towels, tissues, and shoes out of its way, as long as they weigh no more than 300 grams, or about 10.5 ounces.

Don’t let us strong-arm you into buying one when it becomes available in “the first half of 2025,” as Roborock vaguely says. We don’t have a price yet, but we image that it’ll pick your pocket for a pretty penny. Although if it frees you from having to constantly bug your kids or your partner to pick up their dirty laundry so that the robovac can do its job, then perhaps it’ll be worth it.