The merchandise for Game of Thrones continues to come thick and fast, some of it awesome some not so. Straight from a Chinese factory near you we have the officially licenced character USB flash drive...

The one sent for review was Arya, in an 8 GB version, although you can get a more useful 16 GB stick if you so wish.

The stick is compatible with Windows 98 SE or later, Mac OS 9.1.x or later and Linux Kernel 2.4 or later. The stick is USB 2.0 and measures 3.7 x 2.5 cm.

There is a whole range of these sticks, some more practical than others. The Arya stick only bares a passing resemblance to the actual character, mostly because there have no attempt to produce anything which conforms to the character's actual body. What you get is a small body, which acts as the protective covering for the stick and an oversized head which contains the stick itself.

The stick from Tribe works as you would expect it too and in test there were no obvious faults. However, unless you’re going to buy the stick as anything other than a purely decorative, then the fact that Needle, Arya’s sword, is pointing forward from the body means that it may well spend time sticking in you or it could eventually fall off, in which case the character does a passing impression of Pod.

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Charles Packer