Want a way of marking your drink?

Humans are hardwired to recognize facial expressions rather efficiently.

Some designs have small openings which are great for hot liquids. Imagine steam coming out of the lips of pursed like a kiss or a yawn. Add life to a cup or glass.

More accepted than the urinals of the similar design, not to mention more marketable.

Some designs will come with fangs and other cute stuff.

Now, imagine an eyeball floating inside an open mouth staring back at you. (See first link below.)
-- sartep, Mar 25 2004

Would work great with this... http://www.halfbake...ea/Coffee_20eyeball
...For the Steven King look. [sartep, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

The aforementioned mouth urinal. http://www.bathroom...urinoir/kisses.html
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your concept, but I think you're talking about the type of plastic lid that is commonly placed on on a styrofoam or wax paper cup, and then developing a marking system that differentiates an individual user's cup from others.

If you were talking about placing a flat, peel-off adhesive sticker with a variety of lip designs (kiss, pout , toothless grin, stress grimace, etc.) which would be placed over the central straw hole, then I think you'd be onto a novel and marketable product. The stickers should probably be freely available at the take-out counter or register from a sheet of multiples for the user to personalize his or her drink. The lids require no re-tooling in this scenario, the cost to the beverage vendor is minimal, and there are interesting opportunities for cross-marketing and customer satisfaction.

If, on the other hand, you were suggesting that a variety of new extruded plastic lids should be manufactured with sculpted facial expressions, I expect that this would not only be a great deal more expensive to produce, but would also be pointlessly difficult to maintain in inventory and very difficult for the vendor to store and dispense. That is, where before all he had to do was store and dispense small, medium and large flat-packed, self-nesting lid varieties, now he has to inventory and dispense the same three sizes in multiple facial expressions which cannot be interchangably stacked because of their mold designs. So, while it would be an interesting pop-culture novelty, I don't think it would be very practical, and unlikely to return the investment required.

Without having checked to see if the aforementioned lip-stickers already exist and are in wide distribution, I'll give you a + for that.
-- jurist, Mar 25 2004


And that, folks, is a gorgeous annotation.
-- bristolz, Mar 25 2004


Any chance of an illustration?
-- DrCurry, Mar 25 2004


When you wrote "urinals of the similar design" I assumed you meant a urinal shaped like a penis, but [2 fries]'s link seems to contradict that. Which did you mean?
-- AO, Mar 25 2004


Sorry, jurist, I did mean both. Both in the case of stickers or extruded.

I was picturing extruded as more of a novelty where 20 would come in the pack for parties and those would be more in the way of a novelty item but could further have blisters on them (as part of the facial design too.)

Picture either version, the stick-on kind or extruded plastic with blisters at say a halloween party or a trendy drink place.

2 Fries found exactly the urinal I was talking about.
-- sartep, Mar 25 2004


But it would look so funny sticking my ... erm ... into ... oh, nevermind.
-- Letsbuildafort, Mar 25 2004


(Before you read this, I want to say I apologize in adavance to you the innocent reader.) So you're saying that some versions of these cup holders should be made of silicone?
-- sartep, Mar 25 2004


MASS CUSTOMIZATION! Also, your McCoffee cup may have your name on it, news of the day, humorous quotes, or (god forbid) SPAMVERTISING. Customized Disposable dishwear can be the new internet popup anoyance in your life.

I think Dixie cup once did a fun thing by printing 5 different playing cards on the bottom of each cup. Then standing around the water cooler you compare hands with others to see who wins.
-- sirching, Mar 26 2004



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