Sometimes you've got a need that you fill by designing a product, which is why we have carrot-peelers and hair dryers; other times you start with a material and come up with a use for it, which is why we have Post-Its and Velcro straps.

So what would you do with the latter approach if you had a warehouse full of Viscoelastic Polymer? As the name suggests, VP is nothing more than a polymer with both viscosity and elasticity; which is to say it's adhesive, squishy on a molecular level and moldable.

3M uses the stuff to dampen vibrations in hard drives. But a far sexier use was struck upon by Monsterpod, which incorporated Viscoelastic Polymer into the base of their disc-shaped "tripod," which holds your 20 oz. camera in any position by sticking to whatever surface its applied to, for 1-10 minutes. And when the VP gets dirty, you can just wash it off with water. Runs about $30, available here.