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Ill thought product design #1

By User Imagepartickbateman | January 23, 2007

Bad product design infuriates me. And I don’t mean in this in a lofty “the work displays a childish lack of synchronicity between free playing motifs” style. I mean things which arrive in my grubby, ill-tempered paws on the pretence of serving a useful purpose when in fact they are as welcome (or useful) as projectile vomit retched from the maw of the nearest village idiot. I mean The mundane, common items we interact with on a regular basis whose use should pass by almost undetected. Things which have been passed through a near-infinite loop of “brainstorms”, sketches, mock-ups, prototypes, committees, design committees, usability studies and focus groups, all to no avail. Things which despite all of the above, fail utterly and seemingly resolutely in their simple task. There are so many of these things that if it was not for the fact that I am a man of inaction this would no doubt become a regular feature, my undistilled rage fuelling many a keyboard-smashing blog entry. However, for now I will settle with attacking my one true nemesis: the Heinz Ketchup Jumbo Squeezy Bottle.

An affront to opposable thumbs everywhere, this ill-thought monstrosity renders even the most dextrous sauce consumer aghast. It is simply impossible to control the rate at which the sauce comes out. Impossible. It is either on or off - truly a product of our times, the sauce bottle has come of age and gone digital. For those of you fortunate enough never to have experienced it, a picture:

Look at its heaving presence and tremble my friends. So badly designed is it that nearby dams tremble when some poor fool uncaps its mammoth lid and threatens to squeeze lest they be broached by a torrent of sugary goo. And whilst the logic of purchasing a single bottle containing 1.2kg of ketchup at one time escapes me now, I am nonetheless infuriated at the nerve of these bastards. I can picture the boardroom now:

Marketing Director: We’ve lost 3 percentage points of market share to Daddies, and their brand awareness is rising faster than a coke-filled cock. What we gonna do guys?
Marketing Exec 1: Make it the colour green again! And organic this time! Ethical consumption etc!
MD:No dice - we need to save that doozy until things get really bad. C’mon guys, blue sky it - first with a new idea gets my daughter for the night.
ME 2: I’ve got it! People always moan about it coming out too slowly, so let’s put it in a squeezy bottle-
Secretary: We already did that!
ME 2: -get my cock back in your mouth and let me finish. We put it in a squeezy bottle, then TURN IT UPSIDE DOWN”
All: Yeah!
ME 2: You ain’t heard the best bit yet. We fill that cumbersome bastard up with 1.2kg of our sugar laden shit so those dumb fucks will spray most of it across the room before a drop even goes near their fishfuckin’fingers. They’ll use so much of it in one squirt that straight away they’ll need to go right out and buy another bottle.
MD: Genius! Here’s the keys to my Cayenne; Olivia finishes nursery at 3.

Is it so irrational to want a choice in how much ketchup goes on my dinner? The amount of good food this cursed vessel has destroyed is second only to the backwards EU subsidies that mean we pay for mountains of butter only to see them fruitlessly melt away (Political comment? Whu? Bet you weren’t expecting that little curveball. Richie:1, you:0). My flat has resembled a bacon sandwich Krystalnacht since I bought the damned thing. I may as well just put the fucker on the floor and jump on it for all the good it does. To illustrate its ineffectiveness I tried to use it to draw the following picture of a cat - as you can see an exercise in futility:



Perhaps most infuriatingly, sometimes no sauce is forthcoming at all. Frequently I find myself squeezing it with all the strength I can muster (admittedly very little, given my diet consists of nothing but force-fed tomato ketchup) and no matter how hard I endeavour to crush its cruel, unyielding sides I am left defeated, mocked and humiliated. A sauce bottle should not bring back the harsh memories of being picked last in P.E. But my defeat does not last long! I cunningly realise that squeezing the opposing sides will draw air into the bottle, allowing me to throttle the swine as God intended. But this has an unforeseen and even worse effect: not only does the bottle ejaculate its wretched contents even faster than usual, but the trapped air continues to force it out long after I’ve abandoned the soul sapping exercise for the safety of the oven.

The fact is that I would rather this situation did arise as a case of malicious corporate cynicism than as a result of the acts of lazy, slow minded, dispassionate buffoons who have the blind cheek to hawk their ill-thought wares on an unsuspecting public, mindless of the terror they will unleash. How didn’t they spot this? How could such a useless piece of design ever make it past the prototype stage? How can people get paid for doing such a blindingly flawed piece of work?

With such idiocy rife in the world I fear we are all doomed.

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3 Responses to “Ill thought product design #1”

  1. Niall Says:
    February 9th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    As entertaining as it is watching you on your merry dance towards a heart-attack, I can’t help but point out some problems with your attitude towards Heinz’s Tomato Ketchup:
    1) I’d like to see you try and draw a picture of a cat with a normal glass bottle.
    2) What homo doesn’t like to drench whatever it is he is eating with shedloads of ketchup (I personally only use said condiment on eggs of varying cookedness- fried and scrambled mostly, as well as omelletised)?
    3) How can the logic of buying a 1.2kg bottle of Heinz’z greatest invention escape you when it is abundantly clear- IT’S DOSS! Moreover, YOU bought it so what does that say about YOU and YOUR decision making eh?
    4) What do you mean “Is it so irrational to want a choice in how much ketchup goes on my dinner?” YES, Heinz our masters decide, not some lowlife pinko commie like YOU! Pfft. Honestly some people.
    5) “I cunningly realise that squeezing the opposing sides will draw air into the bottle, allowing me to throttle the swine as God intended.” Correction. Squeezing both sides draws air FROM the bottle, not into the bottle. That would be inflating it. Heinz:1 Richie:0
    6) I can control the amount of ketchup I want quite easily using my patented “Opposable thumbs and ability to gauge pressure build up™” method. Niall:1 Richie:0

    May I just say, in light of the myriad defeats you have experienced as a result of this post, in the immortal words of Bjørge Lillelien:

    “Det er aldeles utrolig! Vi har slått England! England, kjempers fødeland. Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana–vi har slått dem alle sammen. Vi har slått dem alle sammen. Maggie Thatcher can you hear me?
    “Maggie Thatcher, jeg har et budskap til deg midt under valgkampen. Jeg har et budskap til deg: Vi har slått England ut av Verdensmesterskapet i fotball. Maggie Thatcher, som de sier på ditt språk i boksebarene rundt Madison Square Garden i New York: Your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!”

    English translation from the Norwegian:

    It is completely unbelievable! We have beaten England! England, birthplace of giants. Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana–we have beaten them all. We have beaten them all. Maggie Thatcher can you hear me?”
    “Maggie Thatcher, I have a message to you during your election campaign. I have a message to you: We have knocked England out of the World Cup of football. Maggie Thatcher, as they say in your language in boxing bars around Madison Square Garden in New York: Your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!”

    That’ll teach you to mess with the corporate giant Heinz. Who do you think you are, Michael Moore?!

  2. Niall Says:
    February 9th, 2007 at 1:30 pm

    PS The bit where I say Heinz’z is deliberate. I’m part of the YOOF culture these days. Innit.

  3. Richie Says:
    April 24th, 2007 at 10:56 pm

    Right, forgot i had to reply to this. So, in brief:
    1)Accuracy is not the case here, but volume. Besides, I’ve drawn a whole menagerie of god’s creatures with my vintage ‘76 sauce bottle.
    2)This homo.
    3)Water is also doss, but tell that to Robert Maxwell.
    4)Sorry sir, ever so humble sir
    5)Wrong. It does inflate it, the resulting inequality of pressure forcing the air from the bottle. It doesn’t get sucked out, you big felcher you.
    6)Your previous answers show that you obviously like a lot of ketchup. Therefore it follows that you use lots of it, making the problem of too much irrelevant. This is also supported by your working class upbringing, which dictates that ten tons of ketchup must cover each meal. Your vegetarianism compounds this further as it means that you are forced to drench your food just to give it some taste.
    Epilogue: Richie 6, Niall 0
    I did like your quote though.

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