KIWIS. Hard to eat, right? The answer: a kspife. Or a spoonki. This is important stuff, as January is the month of fruit.
I was in Glasgow for the holidays and found I was dealing with new eating implements. It’s taken me years in China to get to grips with chopsticks, to take turnip cake off a Lazy Susan during dim sum lunches and to avoid being the person whose place setting needed to be burned afterwards. All of a sudden, Scotland was throwing a cutlery challenge at me.
The eating implement in question nestled in my Dad’s cutlery drawer, not quite fitting in the spoons section. It was like a tiny canoe, in yellow plastic, with one serrated edge.
I asked about it. I was told it came with a four-pack of kiwis. You use the serrated bit to halve the kiwi. The other end is an elongated sharp spoon. It has a point so you can dig into the kiwi, then a shallow spoon to scoop out the fruit.
It’s a kiwi-spoon-knife, which shortens to – what? Kspife. Or a kwifoon? Ki-spoon? Wi-spoon? In Scotland, that would be a wee wi-spoon. Not only are kiwis hard to eat, the cutlery designed to aid their cause defies easy abbreviation and branding.
In essence, this is a simple version of a Swiss Army Knife: A Kiwi Fruity Knife. I’m not sure it will ever rival the military man bangle as the silver status symbol blokes yearn for, though.
The message of the implement is that there’s never a wrong time to get fruity. So I tried the kwifoon; or the spoonki. The knife worked but the lengthened pointed spoon went in too deep and flicked kiwi back at me.
Any fruit that needs its own implement is not a natural snack. Plus my spoonki didn’t deal with all complications. The kiwi is a fruit that is a consumption crisis. Basically, you also need a drainage facility; and hankies. For it to make any headway as a snack, you really require a whole kiwi backpack.
The kiwi is a private tidbit. It’s not an on-the-go grab. It defies portability. Accept that, New Zealand, even though you are a nation that loves the outdoors.
Yeah, most risky pursuits that require equipment will be a success with male consumers. But is there a big enough man-snack market to make this work?Some things are not to be taken out. Kiwis are lots of them. Stay in for furry fruit. All you need is a knife, fork, plate, access to a sink and a tea towel to mop yourself up with afterwards. This stuff already exists.
The one place I can actually see a spoonki or kwifoon working is China, because you can’t eat a kiwi with chopsticks.
The China mainland is already a huge market for New Zealand products; it’s the biggest dairy export destination by far.
So maybe the New Zealand Trade Board, or the Kiwi Council, or whatever it’s called, has done its research. Health is big on mainland China; so is luxury and status.
A Swarovski diamond-studded spoonki may be this year’s status symbol at upcoming Chinese New Year.
This was fun. Cutting edge comment isn’t my style but today is an exception.
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