Junior Taikenou: How to be a forensic sleuth in your own home

Japan is already well known for its offbeat character goods and novelty toys, but few are as unnerving as the Taikenou forensics kit that famed toymaker Takara Tomy is currently hawking to teenagers.

The ¥2,500 ($27) Taikenou set (the closest translation is something like “Experience King,” whatever that means) is aimed at kids aged 15 and up interested in snooping after fingerprints and spilled bodily fluids.

The manager at one suburban Tokyo toy chain told us: "We sold quite a few of the kits to kids well below 15 around New Year, but a few more to adult men shopping alone. I got the impression those guys were a bit too nerdy to have families so draw your own conclusions..."

Complete with a simple microscope, various mysterious phials and a whole range of swabs and scoops for scraping up suspicious fibers and intriguing marks, Taikenou clearly has all the bases covered, but we still have to ask why anyone would bother.

Junior investigators curious enough to prowl their own homes asking “What could that mysterious stain on the washcloth be?” will probably get a huge kick out of the instructional video on the Taikenou website.

The rest of us will likely just find it extremely creepy that a maker of kids’ toys even knows how to measure the pH of mystery substances, dust for fingerprints and divine the difference between strawberry milk and spilled blood.

CNNGo contributor Matt Alt, co-author of "Super #1 Robot" a book about Japanese robot toys, says, "Japan has a long tradition of producing gimmicky toys intended for adults instead of children. American police shows like the X-Files, CSI, Dexter, and Bones are very popular over here. And this set is obviously intended as fun for people who see similar tests performed on screen. It's tongue in cheek and serious at the same time -- very Japanese!"