Funny Business

Published: Monday, 27 Jul 2009 | 2:27 PM ET

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I give up. Just when I think I've seen it all...suddenly, there's Handerpants.

Source: handerpants.com

"Underwear for your hands!" proclaims the marketers of the fingerless gloves designed to look like men's briefs. 

Handerpants launched last week, priced at $12 a pair.

The company behind it, Archie McPhee in Seattle, tells me they've sold hundreds already, as word spread on the internet faster than a Segway race at ComiCon.

The company says Handerpants have "Hundreds of Uses", like wearing them while cruising on your motorcycle, to protect your hands if you're a Narwhal Aficionado (here's the wiki on what that is), or for typing while "night blogging".

Exactly.

The sort of person who will buy gloves which look like men's briefs is the same person who blogs at night. Me.

There's a YouTube ad for Handerpants, where "Chester McGuiness" announces (while sounding like he's trapped in a public toilet), "Talk about sexy! You're gonna have to hold the ladies back after they get a glance of these tighty-whities! Grrrrr."

You can even download a ringtone which screams, "Handerpants? Handerpants? HANDERPANTS!"

"This is the first expansion of underwear from one body part to another," boasts a cheeky David Wahl, director of marketing. "We are the envy of the entire undergarment industry." He says the company was trying to find a new product to build on last year's hit, the Squirrel Underpants, they sold several thousand of those, and Wahl says some were even used as prizes during pledge week at one NPR station. But nothing has yet matched the record sales set by the company's Yodelling Pickle.

But Handerpants?

Source: handerpants.com

Who thought that up?

"In a creative meeting, the name actually came up before the design," says Wahl.

Yes, someone in a brain storming session shouted "Handerpants!" and they...just...knew.

"It's a solution for a problem that probably doesn't exist."

A designer figured out what the Handerpants should look like, and they sent it off to their overseas manufacturer.

When I asked if the company's manufacturers ever say, "What the...?" when they see these crazy designs, Wahl told me, "No..We even made it through customs."

Apparently there are import duties on underwear, and Handerpants managed to avoid them.

Score one for free trade!

Check out some of the other outrageous products, like the Donkey Cigarette Dispenser. Don't use without wearing Handerpants for protection.

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