Screw the polio vaccine! Philippe Meert has just solved the worst humanitarian crisis in history:
IN theory at least, pouring a bowl of cereal is one of the simplest tasks imaginable. But early-morning grogginess can wreak havoc on a person’s eye-hand coordination, occasionally turning the act of dishing out corn flakes into a messy adventure.
Philippe Meert has experienced that messiness firsthand. Four years ago, while on a business trip in Los Angeles, he tried to start his day with a healthy breakfast.
“I poured cereal into this bowl, and a lot of the cereal ended up on the table,” said Mr. Meert, a product designer who lives in Erpe-Mere, Belgium.
That convinced him that the traditional method for transferring cereal from box to bowl was flawed — the flakes, bits, or O’s tumbled forth too quickly, thanks to the gaping size and irregular shape of the holes torn into the bag inside each box.
But that’s not all!
To correct this age-old design flaw, Mr. Meert developed the Cerealtop, a yellow and red plastic cover that latches onto a cereal box and channels its crunchy contents through a resealable, trapezoidal hole. In addition to preventing accidents, the Cerealtop is intended to preserve freshness — and not to obscure the cereal box’s graphics.
(“I love all the artwork on cereal boxes,” Mr. Meert said, referring to whimsical industry characters like Tony the Tiger and Count Chocula.)
Now he just has to convince people to shell out for it, rather than sticking with the time-honored American “feed-the-dog” technique for cleaning up edible messes:
AMERICANS certainly love their cold cereal, having spent $6.2 billion on it last year. One challenge for Mr. Meert and his distributor, however, will be to persuade consumers to forget about the so-called five-second rule, the shaky premise that spilled food remains edible if it is retrieved within five seconds of being dropped on table or floor. Serving early-morning cereal may be prone to error, but that does not necessarily mean that much of it goes to waste.
(Tip o’ the nib to iocaste over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money.)
Oh, the humanity!
What about the milk, indeed. I’m way more worried about spilling it.
That’s what I love about those infomercials – they try to convince you that something you’ve never thought about before and do every single day of your life is a Serious Hardship – how do you do it?
Ooh. At $4, I might buy one. Try pouring cereal into a bowl on a table that is at shoulder height or higher sometime – or doing it with hands that don’t grip tightly, or shake, or anything along those lines. Or heck, one-handed.
Not a humanitarian crisis, but I know several people who will think this is very cool. *You* may not have ever thought about this before, but there are those of us who have to. Granted, doesn’t seem like that was the target market … but it’s still useful.
Hee hee. I laughed when I read this post because I literally just spent the last 10 minutes cleaning cocoa puffs (and accompanying ants) up off the table… counter… floor… under the fridge… thanks to the uncoordinated yet successful attempts of my two kids to get their own breakfast this morning (ok, yea, its 10, housekeeping is not my strong point).
I agree with Gordon K. My older son has fine motor skill/coordination issues which accompany his disability. Sometimes its these types of gadgets that make everyday life skills a little easier for him. Pouring cereal, opening doorknobs, using keys, holding pencils, cutting food on a plate… there are a huge variety of daily tasks that some of us do without thought but some have great difficulty with. If someone can come up with a $4 solution for it, I’m all for it.
Cool…now who’s going to solve the “coffee stain on the white shirt” humanitarian crisis? :-)_
Whewwww! At least I can get some fucking sleep tonight knowing that spilled crereal will soon be a thing of the past.
Body of Missing Maryland Publishing Mogul Philip Merrill Found
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But does it work for everything from Grape Nuts to granola to oversized flaky stuff? I can’t imagine that all pours the same way.