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If you’re a manufacturer that isn’t putting out particularly exciting products, how do you get people to sit up and take notice of your company? Toshiba has decided to try and win the hearts and minds of consumers using TabletMan, its latest mascot that’s quite literally a man wearing a multitude of tablets. The Japanese company set TabletMan loose on the streets of Singapore to let onlookers and pedestrians alike interact with the tablets. Rather than simply letting people idly swipe through the OS, TabletMan encourages them to record short voice messages for their future selves. Toshiba believes that the sortie in Singapore will be the first of many around the world for TabletMan.
Of course, Japan is no stranger to tech mascots. Even Western companies like Microsoft have tried to take advantage of them, with the company creating its own OS-tans for the Windows 7 and Windows 8 launches in Japan. TabletMan seems to be drawing some attention — the man-tablet hybrid has amassed over 64,000 "Likes" on Facebook so far — but distracting consumers with a song and dance rather than simply offering compelling products is a tradition that the country seems to be struggling to shake off.
