Mihai Panaitescu, a Romanian designer from Focşani who is attending school in Italy, developed this winning concept car design for French automaker Peugeot. In his design notes, he believes the car, Flux, will serve to bind the human with his natural surroundings rather then insulate. He goes on to imagine the car would be powered by hydrogen fuel cells and be constructed with very light-weight materials such as plastic and aluminum (aluminium).

Peugeot is actually going to construct the automobile as a prototype to show off at the prestigious Internationale Automobil-Ausstellungen auto show this September. They also plan an award ceremony in Geneva to honor Mihai and others in October. And they’re cutting him a check for nearly eight grand, according to C|Net.

Not too shabby.

French toymaker Norev plans to profit from the sale of scale-model diecast collectibles of the design. Even Microsoft gets a cut of the action as they announce their intention to incorporate the car into one of their video games for the Xbox. A whole list of other contest partners stand to benefit in various ways from Mihai’s creation.

Mihai Panaitescu’s Flux concept was chosen as the grand winner from some 4,000 submissions. Check out the second and third place winners. From there, you can explore some of the other interesting designs on your own. Or take a gander at Mihai’s graphic design using Star chips and other Romanian brands.

Q-tips. Cotton swabs. Ear sticks. Betisoare.

Every day throngs of fools risk their very lives by wasting good money on these extremely dangerous products as some sort of aid in incorrectly cleaning out perfectly natural ear wax. But in a litigious society, the Q-tip box will very clearly warn you: Do Not Use Swab in Ear Canal. They don’t want to get sued into oblivion if some nutjob pushes it in too far and damages the ear drum.

Yet they sell it.

It’s a bit like cigarette warnings. A lie. They want to sell you the product. They know how you intend to use it. But they’ve got a boardroom full of uptight suits fretting about how the possible consequences of using their goods might take money away from their Porsche Cayanne payments.

Heavens no!

The strategy is to slap a wacky warning on it in order to deflect the legal repercussions of known product use. They want you to put it in your ear and get that irritating wax out. If you actually listened to the warning, their company would go out of business overnight.

Q-tips aren’t the only cotton swab brand, but it’s the most famous in America. In fact, the term q-tip has become a generic word like xerox, coke, kleenex, kitty litter, dumpster, band-aid, velcro, rollerblades, super glue and more, all despite the faint efforts to protect these trademarked names.

But they aren’t the only ones selling by any stretch.

How about Clinere (pronounced “clean ear”) which makes a ear-tips and an ear-brush? Directly on the package, it says nice and loud: Do not enter the ear canal! Riiiiiiight. Are we supposed to believe you sell a product for dusting off our lobes? Say it ain’t so.

Sure, sure. I predict some of you will quote doctor advice about the possibility of maybe bunching up a little bit of ear wax now and then, which leads you to dismiss cotton swabs. Maybe you’ll whip out the old standby about how medical observations show it’s possible to damage your ear drum if you ram the cotton swab without restraint.

Da, da, da. The babble of worry-warts.

If you listen to the con artists at Q-tip, they’ll bald-faced lie that their products are “the ultimate beauty tool.” Parent company Unilever’s desperate avoision of the lawsuit trigger-happy would like you to actually believe cotton swabs are to be used for the application of make-up.

That, my friends, is laughable!

The most interesting part is how the Q-tip website makes no mention of ears at all. As if it were a non-issue. Pretending that only a crazy person would dare to think cotton swabs are expressly sold for the cleaning of ears.

Pretty impressive posturing, if you ask me. Ouale mari.

Gotta love Romania, though. No baloney, no gimmicks. They call it like it is and let the chips fall where they may.

Translation: It’s for cleaning your ear canal!

In the 1980s, Namco and other video game developers included thinly-disguised Coca-Cola icons into their popular titles. It was a simpler time, when the programmers were in love with a caffeinated beverage and just wanted to show it off.

They didn’t ask compensation for product placement like the modern game developers. And Coca-Cola never threatened to sue for unauthorized use of its’ trademark. It was enough that one party thought it was hip to include a close representation of a beloved icon and the other party had its’ brand’s cool-factor boosted (along with sales, presumably).

You’d have a hard time getting away with that in the United States, these days.

But in Romania?

I’m not a legal expert on intellectual property law in this country, yet I have to wonder what possessed the conservative marketers at Coca-Cola to incorporate a thinly-disguised Pac-Man trademark as if some sly old coot from a bygone era of video gaming were tasked with designing Fanta bottles.

Turnabout is fair play.

Shipping the award for best fake blog to the marketers.

Are you into those little smut novels sold to women in lieu of pornographic magazines?

Have you heard about the one about the exotic dancer? She’s got that long reddish-brunnette hair cascading in ringlets far past her shoulders in a pleasantly defiant femininity visually appealing to certain men.

A broad, closed-mouth smile is covered in lipstick like some secret invitation wrapped in ribbon just below her magazine-perfect nose. She naughtily sits on elevated desktop playing teacher just for you.

She’s wearing an all white, one-piece dress whose buttons reach all the way down to her ankles. Her head is playfully cocked, allowing the rings to brush over her shoulder so you can see the length of it while darting your glances to the smooth skin of her taught neckline.

The titillating sight of this flesh is ever-so-gently daring you to look further downward to where she’s got the top button of her dress open, revealing naked skin below her small shoulders and above the breastline she knows you’re curious about.

With eyebrows properly plucked into seductive shape, her light brown eyes look directly into yours with a laughter all their own. For she knows you’re fighting the desperate urge to break eye contact and chase the lower reaches of your field of vision which have revealed that this seductress has unbuttoned the bottom half of her dress in anticipation of your carnal desires.

Begging for the quickening of your pulse and shortening of your breath, the radiant siren has slyly spread her legs apart and is now extending two fingers of her left hand onto the magic place no longer hampered by fabric.

She begins to moan, “Ahhhh…”

Hey, hey! Slow down there, Charlie! Not familiar with this particular tale? Well, it’s available in most grocery stores, but not in the book aisle where you might expect it. No, it’s over with the medical and personal care supplies. Waiting for you to take her into your hands and do whatever you want with her.

I’ve seen this little doozy in a couple/few households across all parts of Romania. Apparently, it’s been quite a popular little product. Take a porn star model, then photoshop a little nurse hat on to her head and uniform insignia on her chest. Slap on a little tag with the cheeky name of Mona.

Instant marketing recipe!

I’m not precisely sure who buys this, though. I’d kinda always figured that women accounted for the vast majority of rubbing alcohol purchases. Part and parcel with this assumption was the idea that ladies wouldn’t be too likely to purchase porn-driven products. Viva the modern, liberated gal!

Since I’m making rash guesses, I should admit I get the impression this sexy little piece of branding was devised by a couple of fraternity boys after 3 or 4 bottles of palinca during an all-night bender. I won’t decry it, per se; I mean, whatever works.

The product “Mona: Alcool Sanitar” is produced by two brothers, Ioan Micula and Viorel Micula, who own Scandic Distilleries which recently lost its production and sales license in the wake of a massive fraud and bribery investigation of cronies and friends of corrupt PSD officials (the former communists who now call themselves socialists).

Fear not, ye who surf the web naked. The Micula brothers have a vast empire of companies, including the very large European Food and European Drinks, which means they very likely have the resources needed to ensure that Mona finds her way back onto your shelf soon.

Especially, since their corrupt ex-communist allies have helped secure an unusually large sum of €250 million in loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development despite that the loan is unnecessary due to years of strong profits and substantial export revenue growth, runs counter to EBRD’s espoused anti-corruption efforts in light of serious fraud investigations for more than a year, and arguably being outside the primary scope of the EBRD’s mandate to assist in privatization and market economy transition.

Public institutions misappropriating fund outlays politically? Surprise, surprise.

Maybe the subsidiary should be named Scandalous Distilleries.

Still, kudos to the Finance Ministry for slapping the bad guys on the wrist. It’s more than many had expected to occur.