Magic beans. To many, they conjour up memories of an illicit offer at a summer festival. To others, the charms of a distant childhood Panto memory. To us at gadgetshop HQ, magic beans are eco-friendly message-bearing vegetables that will happily replace a birthday card and make an environmental point, to boot.

Intrigued? You should be, for these beans are not the gateway to a giant beanstalk, but they do promise to be wholly memorable for an altogether different reason.

Now, if you've been Mr Been and need to get back into someone's good books, the choice is simple. Either do nothing, or simply plant the Magic Bean in the pot provided with the compressed compost provided, water as advised, and soon you'll have a growing magic bean on your hands, sprouting along nicely, with a stem bearing the sweet inscription 'Happy Birthday'.

'How on earth is that possible?', we all asked as one back at gadgetshop HQ. But ours is not always to question why, and sometimes, just sometimes, to sit back and marvel at the majesty of science and glory of technology.

And if that should not be enough to impress you, the bean will eventually sprout leaves and be capable of planting in a larger pot - turning your message into a living, oxygen creating, chlorophyll-filled organism.

Now that's magic.