Core77

Design Overkill Object of the Week: Cast Iron and Walnut Coffee Scoop

$45 gets you a Sqoop

By Rain Noe - June 1, 2023

in Object Culture | Food

I used to listen to a podcast with a funny segment called "Who the F buys this S" that talked about ridiculous items you can purchase. I thought of that after seeing this:

That's Sqoop, a $45 coffee scoop made out of cast iron and walnut. It was designed "to hold 10 grams of coffee grounds, ideal for a single cup of coffee." Being cast iron, it's also touted as being magnetic, if that's important to you.

On the one hand I'm tempted to say "Jeez, what a use of raw materials." (If it was upcycled from other objects, the product description doesn't say.) On the other hand, objects like this are like illegal drugs: They wouldn't keep making them if so many people didn't want to buy them.

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B Delta

a year ago

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I barely look at core any more because of content like this - but a friend sent me this post since it rubbed him the wrong way, and it really rubbed me the wrong way, too.

Why say anything at all? You just like to sh*t on the little guys? I have no affiliation with HMM, nor do I own any of their products (their scissors are pretty darn cool though), but based on their website they have a reasonable approach to the design of objects, and an aesthetic that I can certainly see resonating with some folks.

Their price-point is on the high side, but they're clearly positioned as some amount of art/design object that the customer/user would be proud to leave out on display (again, not necessarily *you*). If price is such a sticking point I'd ask: how much is a vase worth? Or any other functional - but often mostly aesthetic? I have vases that were found-objects, and some that were over $100. They all do the same thing functionally, yet we do this funny little thing in human society, where we see something that resonates with us for whatever reason, and we decide that the joy we'd get from that object is worth spending the extra few bucks. I guess that's what separates us from the robots.

You should be lifting up designers, not publicly trash talking them. It's the easiest thing in the world to sh*t on something... try a different angle or just talk about something else.

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- Zach W
  
  B Delta
  
  a year ago
  
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  Odd coming from someone who totally shit on a stool project and caliper design project, on this website.... Why bother commenting negatively on their "terrible kickstarter" campaign? You might be the biggest hypocrite on this site....
  
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Joe Babb

a year ago

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Ha ha. If you got the money, honey ....
way over the top, but then again there are so very many things produced that we don't really need, even if they are magnetic.

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Zach W

a year ago

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Yeti makes a $55 ice scoop that's the same idea... Silly

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Kyle Wolfe

a year ago

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Saying it holds 10 grams of beans is really not accurate. Coffee can weigh differently based on how the beans were roasted. If you weighed 5 scoops each one would have a different weight. It is a really nice-looking object but really serves no greater purpose other than a spoon. The best way to get good coffee is to weigh your beans for a consistent brew. My scale doesn't care how the beans get on it. Seems to me that someone had the means to make something and didn't ask if they should.

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- Ryan Cee
  
  Kyle Wolfe
  
  a year ago
  
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  It's the "aesthetic over all other considerations" school of (bad) design.
  
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