Lactose in Karaoke Pills. Karaoke Pills?

Lactose is a slightly sweet sugar. It's imparts just a hint of pleasant taste to counteract the bitterness of most medications. And it's cheap because it's a waste product of cheesemaking. It's inert in most ways as well. It can be packed down and retain a shape or heated to form a smooth outer coating. All in all, lactose is close to the best and most versatile filler that can be used for pills.

It's not even that big a deal for the vast majority of us who are lactose intolerant, because there's just too little lactose in any one pill to create symptoms. Medical grade lactose should be completely free of contamination by whey or casein proteins, so it would have very low reactivity for those with dairy allergies who are not anaphylactic to dairy. Those of you who are should avoid any lactose, in pill form or in foods.

So I wasn't terribly surprised to see lactose as an "inactive" ingredient in a pill. I was terribly surprised to see the pill.

The karaoke pill.

Serkan Toto, on Crunchgear.com, found The Fushigi na Karaoke Taburetto (Mysterious Karaoke Pills) at the Japanese site Rakuten.

According to the manufacturer, they treat bad breath, expand your singing range by softening the vocal cords and relieve stress. As a result, you are supposed to sing better. They promise your next performance at Karaoke will be brilliant if you take 3 pills 10 minutes before.

Take them just before you sing. Isn't that the equivalent of taking lactase pills just before you eat?

They come in packs of five pills. Since you need three at a time, one pack doesn't get you two karaokes. You only come out even if you buy three packs. Devious marketing indeed. Of course, any mind that could dream up karaoke pills has as high a level of deviousness as Donald Trump on Deal or No Deal. Why expect the ordinary?