Cool Stuff - Icy Novelties For Really Cool Parties

Ice is funny old stuff. Who'd have thought that a bit of frozen water could make such a difference to a party?

But it's not just for plopping into drinks. Crushed ice can be used in buckets to cool bottles of champagne, or in cones with a splash of something sweet as a lower-calorie alternative to ice cream on a hot day. Ice can be molded, it can be sculpted - it can even be made into buildings, like the famous Ice Hotel in Sweden which melts back into the nearby river every spring.

Making a party venue entirely from ice is not an option for the majority of us. But we can still have a bit of fun on a smaller scale by creating unusually shaped pieces of ice for drinks, and ice sculptures as table decorations. Here are a few of our favorite novelty ice products to help you throw the coolest party in town.

Gin and Titonic Ice Mould

Create frozen miniature ocean liners with icebergs and watch them collide in your glass. Each Gin and Titonic Ice Mold will turn out four ships at a time, and an iceberg to go with each.

Fossiliced Dinosaurs

Fill the Fossiliced T-Rex or Stegosaurus mold with water, freeze, and then turn out your collection of frozen dinosaur bones into your drink. You don't have to be a palaeontologist to enjoy Fossiliced Dinosaurs - but we bet Ross from Friends would love them...

Frozen Smiles

These novelty frozen dentures are sure to raise a smile or two when your guests find them floating in their drinks! Each Frozen Smiles mould makes four sets of frozen teeth.

Quack Quack Ice Tray

Create cool party drinks with little icy ducks swimming in them. The Quack Quack Ice Tray makes eight cute little ice ducks at a time.

Fishbone Ice Tray

Add something fishy to your drink with the Fishbone Ice Tray, which makes blocks of ice shaped like fish skeletons. The Fishbone Ice Tray is made of high quality silicon and creates four fishbone-shaped blocks.

Heart Ice Tray Twin Pack

Two heart-shaped ice moulds, which each make ten little icy hearts at a time. Heart Ice Trays are perfect for Valentines drinks - try adding cranberry juice instead of water for really unusual - and romantic - Valentines treats.

BoneChillers Ice Tray

Shiver someone's timbers with these novelty skull and crossbones shaped novelty ice trays. The BoneChillers Ice Tray is perfect for cooling down a pirate party, and it's great for Halloween parties too.

Cool Shooters

Don't just give your party guests ice to put in their drinks... give them shot glasses made entirely from ice!

The Cool Shooters ice mold creates four very cool shot glasses, which you could make with plain water or with juice for a splash of color.

Cool Jazz Drinks Stirrers

Now here's a really cool alternative to plastic drinks stirrers... make them from ice instead, in the shape of little guitars!

Each pack of Cool Jazz Drinks Stirrers contains guitar-shaped ice molds and plastic guitar necks. Fill the molds with water or juice, add the guitar necks, freeze and then turn out your cool-as-anything guitar shaped drinks stirrers and get stirring.

Cool Jewels

Add a touch of sparkle to your party drinks with Cool Jewels. Unlike diamonds, these jewel-shaped ice blocks won't last forever - but they'll keep your drink a lot cooler than a diamond would!

Ice Invaders

Relive your misspent youth with ice cubes in the shape of space invaders. These little frozen aliens are an excellent novelty for 1980s parties, and the durable silicon mold can be used again and again.

Ice Swan Mould

Trick your party guests into believing that you've discovered that you have a hidden talent for ice sculpture, by making ice swans as table decorations. The Ice Swan Mold makes a swan that's 29cm x 23cm x 8cm, making a beautiful centerpiece for your party table.

Advertising's Novelties

The basis of the value of novelty in advertising as an incentive is twofold. Recall the extreme importance, in the lives of our ancestors and in our own experience, of unusual objects, new gadgets, new technologies, new situations, unaccustomed stimuli. This is a very important advertising principle that home business entrepreneurs should take into account.

The organism is perfectly adapted to familiar objects, but strange ones can only set up disturbed or random responses, and hence cause the feeling of shock. We are startled by the novel, be it physical or intangible, be it the object or the idea as long as it is new, full of unexplored curiosity, unattended interest. It is full of interest to us both on account of the danger it may contain and on account of the good it may afford. Hence we always attend to it closely when we discover it. This incentive is closely related to the instinct of curiosity. Curiosity is merely the name for our interest in the unknown or unfamiliar. Throw a strange object into the field and the horses and cattle will circle around it, sniffing, poking and snorting until they seem to have discovered all the possible sources of activity to be anticipated from the object. If the object shows no new traits, but behaves just as the old familiar objects in the pasture, the cattle soon scatter away and are hereafter unconcerned about it.

But if it shows any new or unwanted characteristics, the animals are interested in it for days and may be observed constantly examining it. The same is true of a child with a new toy, the teenager with the latest video game, or the geek browsing through a sea of web pages with new internet technology content.

Novelty is an effective attention device. This also illustrates an important principle of perception, that one " sees " not so much what the sense organ affords but rather what the present stimulus has been learned to mean.

Sensation is supplemented by perception. Sadly home business entrepreneurs tend to forget about, and are painfully reminded when their advertising campaigns are not successful.

Herein lies the strong attention value of all devices designed to arouse curiosity - bizarre figures, cuts, shapes, flashing internet banners, to be continued TV episodes, a good written sales letter, curios spelling, unusual location or positions, catchy names, trade marks, billboards, browser pop ups, the you are the winner e-mail or the ever present online ad promising on how to become rich from home, unfamiliar media, such as balloons, window exhibitions, prize packages, contests, web blogs, traffic exchanges, viral networks, etc.

It has been known that even churches have frequently carried on advertising campaigns based on the novelty incentive, introducing unheard-of specialties and stunts into the service.

Online business entrepreneurs, newspapers, politicians, publishers, movie studios, dealers in every commodity, machinery, etc., uses this incentive to advantage. The element of novelty attracts the attention initially, and, if the thing is sufficiently curious, the observer is likely to keep his attention fixed until the advertisement has been thoroughly digested.

If possible, the novelty should be intrinsic, not simply obtruded as an attention device. A good example of effective and intrinsic novelty is the assertion made once by the old and celebrated advertisement of 3-in-1 Oil : " Men shave with it." It was a clear attempt to employ the novelty device for purposes of attention.

The chief danger in using the novelty incentive is, of course, that of emphasizing the novelty rather than the product.

So home business advertisers should be advise, since the introduction of novelty in advertisement, evidently also introduces the applicable warning of past results do not guarantee future performance.