I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been playing a pickup basketball game and, with about 25 minutes left, felt the need to have a pizza waiting for me at the end of the game. And who wants to stop the game to take 30 seconds to order the pizza with a smartphone app? If only there was a way of ordering pizza with my shoes while I was running back on defense …

Honestly, this has never happened to me or probably to anyone else. But that doesn’t mean someone hasn’t come up with a solution to the problem that never existed, using true American ingenuity.

Pizza Hut now allows you to press a button on the tongue of its special “Pie Tops” shoes — yes, Pizza Hut is owning that horrible pun — to order a pizza. The shoes make a Bluetooth connection with your smartphone, and pressing the button triggers an app to have a pizza delivered to you. The delivery is made to the shoes’ location, as they contain a locator chip.

Yes, it’s a crazy, stupid, and wonderful idea, all at the same time. You would set up the app with your default pizza ordering criteria (toppings, crust type, et cetera) at any time, and then it’s ready to go when you want to push the button.

If you’re watching the NCAA Tournament basketball games the next few weeks, you can expect to see plenty of Pizza Hut commercials during the games featuring former Duke basketball star Grant Hill wearing the shoes.

Oh, Those Crazy Pizza Hut Marketers

If you think ordering pizza with shoes sounds like more of a marketing gimmick than a useful tool, you’re right. And the gimmicky part of the idea becomes more obvious when you learn that Pizza Hut has announced the shoes will not be for sale anywhere. Instead, the restaurant chain plans to make only 64 pairs of basketball shoes, possibly giving a few pairs away as part of a contest at some point in the future.

This isn’t Pizza Hut’s first marketing ploy around tech. You can order from Pizza Hut via smartphone app, Facebook Messenger, the Amazon Alexa personal assistant, and via Twitter. In the UK, Pizza Hut announced a pizza box with DJ controls that works over Bluetooth to send audio to a smartphone.

The Pie Tops are a fun idea, but I’ll be truly impressed when the company figures out how to send me a pizza via a Star Trek-like transporter. Beam me up a pizza, Scotty. Extra cheese, please.

Newest Pizza Hut Gimmick — Ordering Pizza With Shoes

Finally starting to ship after raising over $150,000 on Kickstarter, the Ramos alarm clock is designed to make sure heavy sleepers and snooze button addicts actually get up at the right time. When the Ramos alarm clock goes off in the morning, the person in bed has to get up and walk to the remote, wireless, 5-inch by 7-inch Defuse Panel in order to punch in a four digit numeric code.

This is the only way to shut off the alarm since there is no button located on the clock that will deactivate the noisy wake-up call. You can choose your own four digit code or you can allow the Ramos to generate a random code for you each day. You basically have to check the display of the Ramos each morning to see the new code.

If you think you can just unplug the clock to turn off the alarm, you are out of luck. The Ramos comes with a battery backup that lasts several hours and will continue sounding the alarm if the clock is unplugged.

Think you can wake up ten minutes before the alarm goes off to tweak the alarm time? Wrong. Within thirty minutes of the alarm time, the Ramos goes into a lock-down mode and doesn’t allow any changes to the alarm time. However, if you do get up early, you can enter in the defuse code in order to disable the alarm before it goes off.

Incorporating a retro, Steampunk style into the design, the Ramos can be ordered in a variety of different wood grains. In addition, the Ramos can be ordered with a basic LED display or can be upgraded to tested Soviet Union “nixie tubes” that have a warm, neon glow and extremely stylish look. However, the Ramos alarm clock certainly isn’t cheap. The LED Ramos sells for $200 while the Nixie Ramos goes for $350. Early Kickstarter backers are starting to receive their Ramos alarm clocks, but new preorders are being taken for a May 2013 ship date.

Ramos alarm clock diabolically forces you to get out of bed