The Japanese toy giant Bandai teamed up with cosmetics powerhouse Fancl to produce Bihada Kantei: a small digital skin condition checker that will be released on 30 november (suggested retail price 3.570 yen.).

Now as the winter months approach, what’s a girl to do to protect herself against unsightly dry skin? If only she could have her own personal skin expert on hand to tell her how best to hydrate her epidermis. Fortunately here, Bihada Kantei, comes in quite handy.

The device is purported to check the levels of moisture in your skin and aimed at beauty-conscious women in their 20s. After answering a few questions about the state of your skin, like “Are you wearing any makeup?” the sensor is pressed to the face for one minute after which it gives the user an assessment ranging from 1,000 (rather dry skin) to 10,000 (luscious beauty).

If your moisture content is found wanting, the device dishes out some useful advice to help you rehydrate those parched skin cells. You can also do a follow-up check that will display a chart.

The size of this gadget is limited (924 × 33 × 23mm), it looks like an USB memorystick, and doesn't take too much space in women's bags.  Skin conditions of about 90 days can be stored, revised, analyzed and visualized as graphs.  The "Skin Expert" is powered by 2 CR2023 batteries. (JapanPulse)