Traverse City Record-Eagle

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July 8, 2008

Marketing ideas takes inventive spirit

By MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS

I'm trolling the kitchen store for handy gadgets to send home with my Pakistani exchange daughter when I come across Ice Kabobs, kabob-shaped molds you fill with your favorite drink to create frozen swizzle sticks.

I buy them, imagining tall glasses of desert water cooled with ice kabobs as an amusing accompaniment to a chicken or lamb kabob dinner halfway around the world. But not before I wonder, "Who came up with these, anyway?" with the incredulity I usually reserve for products advertised on late-night TV.

True, some inventors inspire admiration, if simply for their persistence in trying to bring their ideas to the market. Take the local guys who created the Sqooshi, a bath loofah with an integrated body wash reservoir, and the Baby Blow-Out Blocker, a disposable diaper attachment that helps contain messes. Or my father, who as a young man naively responded to a patent company seeking inventions only to see his idea for a paint container with built-in pouring spout later sold under someone else's name.

Still, there are some inventions that ought never to have seen the light of day. They're too silly, useless or, like certain artifacts in medieval torture museums, just plain macabre. And I shudder to think how they were tested.

Consider alternating current, which Thomas Edison tried to discredit by using it to electrocute Topsy the elephant in 1903. An estimated 1,500 people attended the gruesome Coney Island execution and thousands more saw it on film. Not much has changed; today animals are regularly tortured in the name of product development.

With that in mind, here are a few of my own, kinder and gentler, inventions for which I'm currently seeking licensees:

-- Spud Jacket. Like the little cardboard ring the barista puts around your coffee cup, it would protect your fingers when you scoop out a hot baked potato. Instead of dancing coffee beans, it could be illustrated with sprightly spuds or even Mr. Potato Head, creating the potential for a marketing tie-in with Playskool.

-- Desktop Finger Bowl. Working, like eating, can be messy -- especially at a newspaper office where getting ink on your person is an occupational hazard. But unlike the finger bowl the waiter brings to your table, mine would be automatic -- more like a tiny personal sink that dispenses warm water and your favorite French soap at the push of a button and never runs out of paper towels. And as long as we're thinking office equipment, why stop there? Why not install pull-out cots under desks for those 15-minute breaks?

-- Drool Cup. A refinement of my father's idea for drooling dog breeds like St. Bernards and Great Danes. It would attach around the head and chin like a party hat in reverse, freeing the wearer to drool into the cup instead of on its owner's lap.

Reach staff writer Marta Hepler Drahos at mdrahos@record-eagle.com.

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