Eat chocolate, wear Cadbury’s Joy Jacket, become a walking carnival

At the end of November last year, Google released its latest mobile operating system riding on one of Nestle’s most favoured chocolate brands, KitKat. This seemingly odd merger between tech and sugary goodness won’t be the last of its kind. Over this weekend, PR company Golin Harris teamed up with creative technology consultancy Hirsch & Mann to debut the Cadbury Joy-Jackets. It’s clothing that responds when the wearer eats chocolate.

There are two jacket flavours available, one for a Cadbury Daim and the other for a Cadbury Oreo collaboration. When you put one of the jackets on for the first time, a voice will respond suggesting you check your front right pocket for chocolate. Neat right? Various sensors and cameras embedded in the Joy Jacket then detect gestures movements and specific colours to figure out that you’re eating a specific Cadbury chocolate bar.

All this is done using a Raspberry Pi and other hacker-friendly toys such as Arduino controllers and so on. As listed by Gizmag, the two jackets further pack Bespoke DMX LED system and tape, a bespoke Arduino shield, CMU Cam and Raspberry Pi Camera, CO2 Inflators, CNC embroidering and a 4.0 amp hour 18 V battery pack. High-tech indeed.

The experience eventually climaxes with colourful LED heart-pumping animations in what the inventors of Hirsch & Mann calls the Transformation. The bottom part of the Joy Jacket then freakishly lifts up revealing purple LEDs and such followed by all sorts of fireworks, waving fans and chocolaty fun. Basically you turn into a walking carnival and, yes, there is confetti.

As mentioned in the blog post announcement, the intention was to “amplify the joy experienced by a person as they enjoyed two different (and awesome) flavours of Cadbury chocolates.”

By keeping them in the confines of quirky fashion shows, the Joy Jackets won’t be available at your local department store any time soon.

Image via Akio Style