42 Degrees - Business from a different angle

Combined Bird Trap and Cat Feeder

Birds eating your garden fruit? Too lazy to feed the cat? This perfect two in one device, invented in 1974 will ensure that your cat gets fat while the local bird population becomes markedly thin on the ground. The device works by enticing little song birds into a welcoming, homely, birdhouse. Once inside they step onto a pivoted stand and are plunged down a shoot into the lower section where they remain trapped until puss is ready for his lunch. You will never need to open a can of cat food again in your life. But you will have to think up a 1001 fun ways to cook all those garden apples you have suddenly acquired.

Roll-on Butter Spreader

The metaphor is a favourite device of those teaching creative thinking. Take a way of doing things in one market and apply it to another. This particular stroke of genius was adapted from the personal hygiene market and applied to the yellow fats sector.

The idea was to find an easy way to spread butter on your bread. What could be more natural than a roll-on butter spreader that functioned like a roll-on deodorant? The only problem was that the substance added to keep the butter spreadable at any temperature meant that it became liquid at room temperature and you ended up not rolling it on your bread but pouring it. Mmm.

Phone Gas

It's a dangerous toxic world we live in as is evidenced by the exponential increase in children with respiratory disorders. The problem is, of course, that children often can't or won't use an inhaler. It's hard to credit, but somebody actually registered this absurd device to administer medicines via a telephone handset as recently as 1998.

It works thus. The phone has a pre-recorded message or music playing into the earpiece. So when it's medicine time, call up your child. When he or she opens their mouth to say hello, hit the magic button and an aerosol spray of medication comes jetting out of the mouthpiece, gassing them before they know what's what. This might just possibly work once. But, unless your children have fewer brains than the average flower pot, no more.

Glove Nail Docks

You know how it is in winter. You've just spent two hours having your fingernails painted in the pattern of your family tartan. But it's freezing outside. So when you leave the salon, you naturally want to slip on some gloves. But you can't, firstly because the nail varnish isn't fully dry yet, but also because your nails are too long. Que faire?

Well you could do worse (but not much) than obtain a set of Glove Nail Docks. These elegantly simple devices are little elastic rings that you sew into the fingertips of any pair of gloves. Just slip your gloves on as usual and your fingernails will berth perfectly in the docks, allowing them to protrude through the end of the glove, keeping your hands warm and your manicure in perfect nick. The patent was issued in 1997, but for some reason the Nail Dock remains out of production.

The Flowbee

Every once in a while, an industry experiences a technological breakthrough that revolutionises the way it operates. Remember brooms? Well ever since the Flowbee was invented they've been walking the same thin ice as horses did in the years after the automobile was invented.

The Flowbee, you see, is an attachment for a vacuum cleaner that you put on your head and cuts your hair. Using the suction power of your vacuum cleaner the Flowbee draws the hair evenly into recessed suction-powered rotating blades and cuts it to whatever length you want. The result is a refreshing vacuum haircut.

As the Flowbee website so eloquently puts it, "The days of towels, brooms and dust pans are gone. With the Flowbee Precision Haircutting System all of the trimmed hair goes directly into your vacuum."