10 Weirdest Anime Merch Items That Are Surprisingly Useful

Anime franchises and IPs make money mostly from merch sales and collaborations with different brands. We all know about figurines, acrylic stands, calendars, keychains, body pillows, boob mouse pads, and plushies, but creativity has no limits, and this rule applies to merch, too. We gathered some weird but useful anime merch items that we have encountered through the years of being in the fandom space in our little list.

Attack on Titan: Levi's Laundry Detergent

Levi Ackerman from Attack on Titan is known for being a very effective, ruthless soldier, but also a clean freak. His obsessive cleaning habits first were a meme, but then the meme got out of control: a widely known cleaning product brand, Attack, chose Levi as a mascot for their antibacterial laundry detergent gel.

The brand posted a survey on Twitter, where they prompted the viewers to choose the design, the pose, the color of the cap adorning the bottle, and the slogan. People chose a maternal-looking "Levi undressing you with his eyes while pouring out detergent" as the pose and the slogan "laundry with no regrets" — a pun on one of the famous Levi's lines from the prequel.

Dragon Ball: Hair Styling Wax

The majority of the characters in the Dragon Ball franchise have a very outstanding design, and one of the things that stands out the most, quite literally, is their hair — especially in Super Saiyan forms. So Bandai decided to collaborate with company Creer Beaute to create a super strong hair wax that would allow you to rock this gravity-defying hairstyle too.

This collaboration includes three versions of the hair wax: natural, hard, and super hard fixation. Different types of wax have packages with different characters on them (the super hard one, of course, features Goku).

The container resembles the orange dragon balls, shiny spheres that move the plot of the series forward, adorned with three, five, or seven red stars on top indicating the hardness of the wax. Considering Creer Beaute's reputation, this product is as much as useful as it is fun and can provide you with a decent hair fixation even in the most rigorous battles.

Love Live! and Hypnosis Mic: Rice

Rice is a staple in Japanese cuisine, and it was used as a merch product not once, but at least twice. First, in the Love Live! franchise, Hanayo Kuzumi is known for her love of rice and is often drawn in a rice field or with a rice bowl in her hands in official pictures, but GG7, the company behind the Love Live!, went further and offered people Hanayo-branded rice. There were three sets of different volumes: a 500 ml bottle, a 1 kg bag, and three 500 ml bottles. The set featured not only rice, but also a rice paddle and some other Hanayo merch.

Another example of using rice as merchandise is Hypnosis Mic, a mixed-media franchise that includes drama CDs, manga, anime, and a gacha game. There's a pun in the name: in Japan the franchise's name is shortened to "hipumai", and the kanji for "rice" can also be read as "mai", which gave birth to the idea of creating Hypnosis Rice.

This franchise is centered around boys doing hip-hop battles, so the company behind this project, King Records, grew the rice while blasting the tracks from the drama CDs over the rice fields. It was available in small sets of 300 gram bricks of rice with a bowl or in 2 kg bags.

Gintama: Gintoki Fork

For such a deranged yet wholesome story, Gintama surprisingly lacks the weird merch that would do it justice. Though there is one item that makes people raise their eyebrows and stifle laughs at the same time: a fork. A small silver fork that protrudes from Sakata Gintoki's, the series' protagonist's, butt.

This piece of merch replicates a scene from episode 334, "3000 Leagues in Search of a Scabbard," where Gintoki's voluptuous behind became the scabbard for the wandering sentient sword looking for its long lost loved one and wanting a little bit of warmth and closeness.

Gintoki is known to have suffered a lot of humorous bodily harm during his years as a lead of one of the most popular Jump series, and in 2019 for the Jump Festa his pains were immortalized in metal. The fork is perfectly usable, even though the metal Gintoki on its end makes the weight distribution a bit unusual.

Howl's Moving Castle: Calcifer Kitchen Utensils

One of the cutest and probably most useful pieces of merch on this list is a set of cooking tools featuring the trusty kitchen helper, Calcifer, from the Ghibli's classics Howl's Moving Castle. This collaboration includes a tiny pancake frying pan embossed with an image of this friendly glob of fire, a spatula in the same shape, and a steel underpot.

Ghibli is known for its wonderfully detailed and drool-inducing portrayal of food filled with love for cooking, and its shop has a variety of goods that would help you achieve your culinary goals. But this set of Calcifer-related items seems the most fitting.

Gundam: Golf Bag

This is one of the most unexpected collaborations because Gundam and golf seemingly have no connection whatsoever. And yet it happened: Banpresto released a collection of Gundam-themed golf equipment in 2013. It features three different bags adorned with the designs of RX-78-2 Gundam piloted by protagonist Amuro Ray, MS-06-S Zaku II piloted by his rival Char Aznable, and the mass-produced MS-06 Zaku II. This collection also introduced six ball markers with RX-78-2 Gundam, MS-06-S Char Custom Zaku, Amuro Ray, Char Aznable, Char's emblem, and Haro.

That was not a one-time collaboration, though: the first Gundam-themed golf bags were released in 2006, and a new version was introduced in 2015, which included updated designs. From that moment on, the Gundam franchise became one of the long-term partners of the PGA Tour, the golf tournament organizer.

Evangelion: NERV Humidifier

Evangelion has a lot of merchandise that makes you raise your brows in disbelief, but one that combines weirdness and usefulness is the humidifier shaped like the NERV headquarters with EVA-01 standing on top of it. This can also double as a quite detailed diorama.

This piece of tech has LED indicators all over it, glowing blueish-white when it's on and red when the water supply is running out. You can set the speed, and its tank fits enough water to last for ten hours of continuous use. The air goes out of the broken apex of the pyramid, replicating a certain moment from Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance.

Attack On Titan: Hair Removal Kit

The hairy Beast Titan surely sparked some insecurities in people, judging by this piece of merch: a nose and body hair removal kit from Don Quixote stores branded by Attack on Titan. This kit includes ten nose hair waxing buds and twenty waxing strips.

Also, the set features collectible pins with Levi, Eren, Levi and Kenny together, and a certain titan with a very hairy nose. The last one also became the face of the whole campaign — he's the biggest character on the packaging and in the subsequent promotional media.

Evangelion: Fishing Gear

You can probably spot a Japanese video game by one very simple gaming mechanic: it would feature a fishing side quest. Now that obsession with fishing has moved from the gaming to the anime: in 2017 a fishing gear manufacturer DRESS released an Evangelion-themed collection of fishing lures, fish grippers, and a tackle bag.

The fish grip is used to grab a fish by its mouth and drag it onto the boat or on the shore, and this one is EVA-01 colored. Fishing lures resemble Units 01, 02, and 00 from the reboot. The tackle bag is NERV-branded and can be used to hold a lot of different equipment, including fishing rods and various extra gear that is essential for fishing.

Ahegao Toilet Paper

No one's gonna argue with the fact that toilet paper is a crucial element of any household. But this one features a design that is so questionable that you either won't ever bring it close to your butt or you will go through the roll in a very short amount of time. There is no in-between. And we're not gonna judge you if you fall in the latter category: we had to ban at least five products from this list for being too NSFW despite being useful and fun.