Samsung may be best known to the tech-loving community for its mobile devices, computers, and televisions, but there are plenty of other products that the South Korean giant makes. From theme parks to medical centers to cars, Samsung’s assorted subsidiaries have their fingers in all sorts of pies.
With all that said, however, the latest Samsung manufactured product may still surprise you: A Samsung-branded flower vase that just so happens to double up as a throwable fire extinguisher. (Insert joke about this pairing perfectly with Samsung’s recalled Note 7 smartphone, with its habit of inconveniently bursting into flames at the drop of a hat.)
The fire-extinguishing flower receptacle looks like an ordinary translucent red glass decorative vase. But like the best James Bond gadget, looks can be deceiving. In a sealed outer chamber is a layer of potassium carbonate, the chemical compound used as a fire extinguisher for deep-fat fryers and various other B class-related fires. In the event that a fire breaks out, all a person would have to do is to smash the vase to release the potassium carbonate contained within. This would then have the event of extinguishing the fire before it becomes a more serious hazard.
The product, called the “Firevase” (you can’t get say they don’t advertise its best feature up front!), was manufactured under the Samsung Fire and Marine Insurance brand. It was designed to raise awareness of the importance of fire extinguishers and has so far been distributed 100,000 times to homes in Samsung’s stomping ground of South Korea. An accompanying print ad was meanwhile run in 46 different publications, while a video ad played in theaters. As a result of the successful campaign, Samsung Fire and Marine Insurance has now reportedly decided to produce an additional 200,000 Firevases.
This isn’t the only fire extinguisher we’ve covered at Digital Trends. Other tech-related approaches to putting out fires include a sci-fi-sounding machine which uses sound waves to eliminate flames and the unusual Elide Fire Ball, a sort of reverse grenade which creates an explosion that can also extinguish fires. We can’t help but love the kind of relative simplicity of Samsung’s approach, though.
