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The Quirky Stem: When Life Gives You Lemons, Design a Clever Product

By Rain Noe - January 16, 2012

in Object Culture

A brilliant Quirky object currently undergoing production is the Stem, a quick, novel and efficient way to get that citrus zing without breaking out the knives.

Spray it, don't squeeze it! Stem is designed to allow a cook to spray juice directly from a citrus fruit. No longer do you have to cut and squeeze your fruit to get the juice out like a common cook. With only one finger you can now spray citrus juice on your favorite foods evenly. Let Stem add a little zest in your kitchen and on your food!

Price and release date is TBA, and while you can't do anything about the latter, they're taking a survey on the former at the link above.

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David

10 years ago

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Everyone who posted on this in its early concept stage. How's that crow taste? works great!
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Tony

12 years ago

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nature already gave us fruits as an exampe of perfect design. Citrus fruits came with a cool, colorful, easy to open packaging and a punch of vitamin and sugar. No need to over complicate the thing.
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fiona brid

12 years ago

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Agree with all of the above , additionally how on earth would you clean it? Ever tried to get paint out of a nossle after being in a spraybooth?
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Duane Brown

12 years ago

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Ugh another piece of plastic that will get used 3 times and then tossed into the junk drawer.. Then eventually spend the rest of it's bane existence for eternity in a landfill or end up on a beach.

Plus I rather enjoy cutting/squeezing lemon over my food.
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Androo

12 years ago

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It might work if you rolled the lemon around on a hard surface a bit first before spearing it to mush up the insides and let the juices flow a bit better. Regular juicing works a lot better this way, too.

But yeah, there's definitely no way you're going to get anywhere near all the juice out of the lemon that way.
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Luke

12 years ago

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I really have to wonder if the person that conjured this up ever even used a lemon squeezer. A simple paring knife is vastly more versatile, more durable, simpler to make and use, and less likely to leave a mess.

I really don't like the idea behind Quirky either. Crowdsourcing can be great, but Quirky looks like something in between a spec work contest and a pyramid scheme.

@Pmurf: I was thinking the exact same thing.
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Chris

12 years ago

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hm..

i remember of a similar concept that worked.. years ago (10-20)
it was just a pipe with a cap and you had to squeeze the lemon...
worked well..
less complexity, easy to use and clean.

good things are simple
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Pmurf

12 years ago

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Reminds me of when I was a kid, lured by tropicana's advertising, tried to stick a straw into an orange and drink up. Oh, the harsh lessons we're dealt in life.

But yeah, unless that crazy wide stabbing end houses a mini juicing mechanism, i'm not seeing it.
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vandebar

12 years ago

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Totally agree with Dudeson, there is no way this can work. Garbage concept.
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Dudeson

12 years ago

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Sorry to spoil the fun, but seems very unlikely to work properly in reality. Another example of designers getting too excited about a conceptual idea that won't fly in real life. I'mean how much of the juice in the lemon will it actually suck and spray? 1/10?
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