ThinkGeek went through Portal madness over the last year, coming out with a slew of products with Valve based on the game and its sequel. The talking Cave Johnson portrait and talking plush turret have been flying off the shelves like they’ve been coated with propulsion gel, but ThinkGeek was nice enough to send us a PotatOS science kit. It’s pretty awesome.

Unfortunately, like the cake wasn’t, PotatOS is a lie. The secret of the device is that it runs on a CR2032 battery. The potato is just used as a conductor to complete the circuit between the two wires, which results in PotatOS talking. That only makes it slightly less cool from a science perspective, and since with a bent paperclip (or a few wires and a switch from Radio Shack) lets you make a plastic potato hold the device just as well as a real one without it starting to smell funny after a few weeks, it’s a pretty good trade-off. It’s just not a science fair project.

Oh, and the PotatOS kit comes with a science fair backdrop written by the Portal development team, and it’s pretty great. Photos below and a video of everyone’s favorite malicious AI above. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to work on turning a Mr. Potatohead doll into GLaDOS-Borg.