Australia has been the home of some pretty significant inventions over the years, including the refrigerator, ultrasound, and even cochlear implants — but this latest one might be the country’s most brilliant invention yet. It’s called ButterUp, and it might finally put an end to one of the biggest problems facing humanity today: our frustrating inability to spread cold butter on soft bread.
Truth be told, ButterUp isn’t really a new invention. Instead, it’s more of clever redesign of the classic butter knife — an object that hasn’t really gotten a significant design update since it was first created. But that doesn’t make it any less awesome.
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Conceived by Sydney-based industrial designers Sacha Pantschenko, Norman Oliveria, and Craig Andrews, ButterUp ditches the plain-jane spreading edge of the traditional butter knife and replaces it with a row of specially-shaped holes near the blunt edge of the blade. When the user scrapes this across the top of a cold stick of butter, it acts almost more like a grate, creating an array of slim, easier-to-spread butter ribbons.
Pretty ingenious, right? It makes you wonder how we’ve been living without this thing for so long.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, ButterUp reached it’s initial $38K funding goal on Kickstarter in just a couple hours, and is currently sitting pretty with more than quardruple that amount. What is surprising, however, is how much some people are willing to pay for this thing. Instead of opting for the $12 dollar version that’s set to ship in March 2015, nearly 100 backers chose to pledge $60 to get their hands on one of the first trial batch of ButterUp knives that will ship in September. Apparently ruined toast is an even bigger epidemic than we thought!
