Review: Portal 2 Warning Sign Coasters

Let’s just assume that you’re social enough to have people visit your home on a semi-regular basis. With that assumption firmly in place, surely you want some way to protect your kickass giant Nintendo controller table from the vile and destructive forces of condensation? Let ThinkGeek take care of you with their Portal 2 Warning Sign coasters. Eight coasters in all, each one depicts a different warning sign from the game. The most important warning they provide, though, is to your guest: Don’t go condensating on my table, or I’ll drop a Companion Cube on your head.

So, now we come to the actual task of reviewing coasters. First things first: do they, in fact…coast? Come to think of it, why are they called “coasters?” Well, according to the ONLY ANSWER I COULD FIND ON THE ENTIRE INTERNET (after a very short search), using “coaster” as a name for…coasters…originated in 1887, “possibly from a resemblance to sleds or because it ‘coasts’ around the table to each guest after dinner.” First test, then: do they, in fact, coast around the table? To some extent, yes. The square ceramic coasters are laid on a layer of cork in order to prevent damage to your table. The cork does slide, but not too far. Could you slide it all the way across a table? No, probably not. Will it slide too far and fly off the end of the table? No, probably not. The ceramic tiles are strong, but probably wouldn’t completely survive a fall onto a non-carpeted floor.

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As you can see in the gallery, the warning signs from Portal 2 are accurately recreated on the white ceramic tiles. The protective glaze on the face of the coaster extends just past the corner, but does not fully cover the side walls, leaving the rough ceramic exposed. This is fairly standard, as far as I’ve seen in my wide experience with ceramic coasters, and actually provides a bit of grip on the walls that you may not have on a wet glazed ceramic surface. On very close inspection, you can see pixelation of the images, but at normal distances, they are fairly sharp. As you can see in the gallery, however, they are not without blemishes, and can even arrive with blurred images, such as the water warning symbol.

Are the Portal 2 Warning Sign coasters perfect? No. As mentioned, on close inspection they are pixelated, and they may arrive with some blurring or blemishes. For $19.99, though, ThinkGeek can give you an absolutely fantastic geeky accent for your living room that will tell all of your guests who you are and what will happen to them if they DARE allow condensation to touch your tabletops.