Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Postal Trojan Robot

Evil Parcel
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The Postal Trojan is deployed at any post-office and addressed to a friendly address. It is largely filled with sand, for reasons that will become apparent later.

After deployment, the robot waits for all human postal staff to go home.

Then, it sprouts arms and legs, and goes looking for items of interest from within the sorting office.

If something interesting is discovered, an orifice opens in the heavy-brown packing paper, and the item of interest is subsumed, weighed internally and an equal weight of sand is ejected to ensure an equal weight and avoid overweight postal charges. Once the operation is complete, the orifice closes, and the parcel appears as before.

The operating mechanism might be remotely controlled, or by automation - either way, this might be an alternative way to gather presents for Christmas this year!

<Distant sound of automated hand-dryer>

Zeuxis, Dec 02 2013

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       Very clever, although I forsee an arms race of ever-larger postal trojan robots. Your local postal sorting office will look like a sort of nightmare futuristic Transformer Wars scenario. [+]
hippo, Dec 02 2013
  

       Does this leave a pile of sand on the floor, or does it repackage the sand to be sent to the original address? Perhaps it could use coal instead.
scad mientist, Dec 02 2013
  

       Is this device remote controlled, semi-autonomous, or fully autonomous ?   

       Water would be the best ballast, as it's cheap, readily available, fairly untraceable, and can be disposed of as a fine spray over a large area and will evaporate without leaving much of a trace.   

       [+]
8th of 7, Dec 02 2013
  

       It might be simpler if the Postal Trojan Robot poured its sand into various pieces of mail/parcel-handling machinery.
Vernon, Dec 02 2013
  

       An expensive and complicated mechanism that comes with the risk of going to federal prison for the opportunity to steal some small items like books and DVDs from the Post Office. [+]
doctorremulac3, Dec 02 2013
  

       Don't use Indiana Jones, he always gets the ballast weight wrong.
RayfordSteele, Dec 02 2013
  

       Lovely. Easily defeated by leaving a camera in the sorting room, but lovely. [+]
gisho, Dec 03 2013
  

       //Easily defeated by leaving a camera   

       Und zo, Zer first target is the camera, the lens rapidly abraded by sandblaster.
not_morrison_rm, Dec 03 2013
  
      
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