Stain Stamp Mugs - the irritating becomes the delightul...

Here's one I saw a while back, and which is now available for purchase at Greener Grass Design - "Stamp Mugs" by designers Valeria Miglioli and Barnaby Barford. The concept is simple (as so many catchy ones are) - make the annoying coffee rings left on tabletop papers into something aesthetically pleasing.

However, I'll suggest that there's something more to the story here. Those little squigglies aren't inherently much more pleasing than the standard coffee stain ring, especially when they're distorted, bloched, and smeared. The real appeal is the surprise of finding something other than the normal stain, something consciously designed.

So if the surprise is the appeal, that appeal is lost if you just consciously spent over fifty bucks on two mugs that were marketed by spoiling the surprise in the first place! In my humble opinion, the way to go with this feature is stealth - sneak it into normal mugs that people might buy for other reasons. Then the surprise is real, and so is the delight, and it might just be worth a ruined paper or two.