Japanese Photo Booth Girls Invade Your Pants Pocket

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About ten years ago or so, I remember when photo booths and sticker pictures were all the rage in Vancouver. My hometown has a large Asian population, so cultural phenomena like that tend to cross the water for us. I don’t know if photo booths are still popular in Japan, but Takara Tomy has come up with a portable version complete with flower and heart graphics.

In case you’re not as familiar, the original photo booths allowed teenage boys and girls (mostly girls) to step into a booth, taking a quirky picture, and have the background filled with funky colorful graphics. A lot of the time, these printed out as little sticker pictures, though you could find several booths that sold trading card-style photos too. The instant pictures were fun, but could get pricey at up to $6 (or more) a shot.

Well, the Purikura photo booth phenomenom has been shrunken down to size by Takara Tomy with the newly announced Love-Digi Moving Photo Camera. I guess the idea is that this camera can reproduce the photo booth experience. You take a pic and then choose from 40 backgrounds, 30 frames, and 120 stamps for decoration. It’s called a “moving photo” camera, because these graphics are animated GIFs.

On the techie side, the 2-megapixel camera comes with 1GB of internal memory, microSD expansion, a 2.5-hour battery life, and a 2.34-inch (480×234) display. What’s missing? The instant gratification of a printer, but I guess that would take away from the “moving photo” thing.

Look for the Takara Tomy Love-Digi in your choice of blue or pink. It sells for $168.

Via Crunchgear