Italian industrial designer Bruno Munari designed this radical Cubo posacenere ("Cube ashtray") around 1954:

Image: Di Albertozanardo - CC BY-SA 4.0

Placing the butts inside the box was completely outside-the-box; up until that point, anything we'd call an ashtray was an open dish, with the crushed butts and ash clearly visible.

Image: Di Albertozanardo - CC BY-SA 4.0

Munari explained his thinking: "I thought I'd do something that would hide the mess, because when we're at the table and there's someone smoking we have a plate of food and a plate of butts in front of us, which isn't very nice."

No manufacturer was interested, and the design sat on the shelf for three years. Finally, manufacturer Danese Milano decided to give it a go in 1957.

The shell is made of compression-molded (non-flammable) melamine, and the insert is an anodized aluminum sheet with four bends in it.

Mixed results on the UX, I'd say. On the one hand, breezes can't scatter the ash, and you can move it even in a windy environment without making a mess. On the other hand, you can only tell it needs to be emptied when the butts start clogging the slot, and I don't see any way of emptying it without making a mess.

In later years Munari himself criticized the design, or at least an aspect of it. Delivering a design lecture in 1992 in Venice, he said of the Cubo (roughly translated):

"I got the psychological aspect of the product wrong, since generally one thinks of an ashtray with the butts and ash in plain sight. People seeing Cubo for the first time didn't immediately understand its functionality."

It's refreshing to hear a designer actually speak critically about their own work.

Flaws aside, the Cubo is still in production by Danese Milano. They're a lot smaller than you think, coming in two sizes: Small, 6cm (2.4") and Large, 8cm (3.1"). They go for €64 (USD $68) and €82 (USD $87), respectively.