Gone are the days when Universal Serial Bus [USB] flash drives all looked the same: small, angular, usually shaped like Pink Pearl erasers, and with removable caps that were always in danger of getting lost. More importantly, gone are the days when all the memory they had on board were 128 to 256 megabytes. As of this year, the standard amount of memory on a USB thumb drive is already a whopping 1 gigabyte, and the prices of flash drives with this capacity are rapidly declining.

While the standard shape for a USB thumb drive remains the cuboid, or rectangular prism, more and more manufacturers are now making their drives in different shapes and colors. After all, so long as the standard USB internals can fit in the device, anything goes – the better to make the flash drive more marketable!

This week’s tech feature is devoted to this year’s weirdest and wackiest flash drives so far. Have a look at each of these oddball-shaped storage devices and tell us which ones you like best!

Category 1: Food-Shaped Flash Drives

Strangely enough, one of the favored categories of shapes for flash drives seems to be food items. Many of them have the standard USB plug connector sticking out one side, or are designed so that the cap and the drive together form the shape of something edible. Sometimes they are so well-designed that it might be tempting to pick one up just to pop into one’s mouth – but these drives are for storing data, not for eating!

We spotlight two rival companies whose major flash drive offerings at present include large selections of food-shaped USB drives: Brando and Solid Alliance.

Brando

In July of this year, Brando released a series of 4GB flash drives shaped like several American snackies: from heart-clogging food such as legs of fried chicken, slices of bacon, slices of pizza, and hamburgers with all the trimmings; to healthier choices such as wedges of watermelon and luscious strawberries; to tea-time biscuits.

Fried chicken and bacon USB drives.

Sandwich cookies, or as the British might call them – biscuits.

Wedges of watermelon, with seeds included, and strawberries.