article: These aren't real products, of course, but an art project poking fun at Asia's obsession with beauty and its propensity for conspicuous consumption. The display was created by the inaugural cohort of Singapore-based graduates of the Glasgow School of Art, which set up its first overseas campus here in 2011. The Scottish arts institution is looking to expand its course offerings over the next few years and aims to help develop the city-state's creative scene. "We hope that we can use this platform and build relationships with other parts of the region using it as a hub," said its director, Tom Inns. "To be an international art schools you've got to understand how the world works in terms of regions and different thinking and different cultures. "It is only by being there that you can only really begin to understand that. You can't understand that from a distance." But if the experience of the last foreign creative arts school to open up in Singapore is anything to go by, there may be some challenges ahead. This summer, the editing labs and sound engineering stations at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in Asia will fall silent for good. The campus, set upon three-acres of prime property in central Singapore, is closing less than 10 years after opening due to millions of dollars of debts. NYU still operates two degree-granting, liberal arts research university campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai. "Despite its significant creative success, the Tisch Asia campus failed to become financially sustainable," says a university statement. John Beckman, vice president for public affairs at New York University said that reflecting back, they had "learned a number of lessons" from their experience. "Academically and artistically, the Tisch Asia campus was a tremendous success," he said. "But academic excellence is also expensive". "We were too optimistic about prospective enrolments both internationally and locally, the latter of which has been pivotal to many global academic initiatives. "We operate on the principle that we will not direct money from the campus in New York to sustain global operations, we should have factored in a greater degree of support needed beyond tuition, especially in the critical start-up years." Mr Beckman added that Tisch Asia "as a relatively small, independent graduate arts conservatory, was an ambitious enterprise". "The general lesson we learned was that it would have been better to have developed such a significant project as part of - and not separate from - our university-wide global efforts." The closure was not just a high-profile and expensive failure for the school, but for the Singapore government, which had invited them to set up here in 2007. However, Tisch Asia is not alone. In recent years, Australia's University of New South Wales, the University of Las Vegas Nevada and Warwick University have all exited, mostly due to financial reasons. Singapore used to publicise its aim of becoming a global education hub, saying it hoped the sector would ultimately contribute up to 5% of its gross domestic product (GDP). More stories from the BBC's Knowledge economy
summary: On the shelves of "Happy Mart," there are gleaming cans of "instant nose jobs", packets of "Same Face" cookies and boxes of "Luxurios" cereal.