Toshiba Gigabeat U103: Over the rainbow

The nay-sayers among you may argue that MP3 players really don't need to be available in six colours. Get ready, sceptics -- you might want to Sellotape up your cranial blood vessels -- Toshiba is releasing its Gigabeat U103 MP3 player in 24 colours. Yes, twenty-four different colours. Including brown.

Only Japanese eyeballs are going to clock these psychedelic delicacies in person, as far as we know. In fact, Britain has only seen one Gigglebeat player in over two years. Curiously, we've also never even seen a Microsoft Zune -- a repackaged, rebranded, re-browned Gigabeat itself -- leading Crave to conclude that Toshiba doesn't get that down-low tickle from giving us its media players, preferring to side with the Statesiders. Well see if we care! We've got a Queen, Harry Potter is set in our country and we pronounce the word 'herb' correctly.

We're chuffed to see the multicoloured Gigabeast conforms to the existing feature set of the player -- 1GB or 2GB, MP3 and WMA formats and FM transmitter as standard. You can point your ocular interpreters at our previous coverage o'er yonder if you're curious.

While a collage of coloured MP3 players makes a lovely picture -- and would make a most excellent wall poster -- it really begs the question, "Do you really need so many shades of red?" As it heralds from beautiful Japan, maybe Toshiba's forked out some royalty money to be allowed to use the catchphrase 'gotta catch 'em all!' Damn, those Japanese guys know how to market stuff to kids.

Until we're deemed worthy of the Gigabeat range, you'll just have to make your own colourful media devices. Refer to the following equation for advice: '(Paint + iPod) + 2 hours = happy times'. -Nate Lanxon