Behold, the Midnight Scoop. It's just as sleek and sexy as it sounds.
Designed by Michigan engineer Michael Chou, the ergonomic ice cream scoop solves the much dreaded challenge of spooning rock solid ice cream before it's ready to budge. (Sometimes you can't wait for the ice cream to soften, OK?) The magnificent tool doesn't use thermal technology like heated scoops; instead, its curved handle simply shifts the labor of scooping from the wrist to the palm, eliminating the need for all that difficult prying.
"Everyone has been scooping ice cream wrong!" Chou writes on a recently launched Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for production.
"Current ice cream scoops are designed in a way that forces you to use weak wrist joints to scoop ice cream. When you are scooping ice cream with standard ice cream scoops, you are doing a prying motion," he explains. "This prying motion puts tremendous amounts of stress on your weak wrist joints. Your brain then tries to save your wrists by not letting you pry very hard -- thus making scooping ice cream very difficult."
Chou says his new design is all about the curved end of the scoop, which allows users to "push" into the ice cream.
"This allows you to keep your wrists straight and protected while you use large muscles like your arms and chest – which are significantly stronger than your wrist," he writes. "This -– to me -– is how to scoop ice cream properly."
Chou's been working on his design for two years. The coated, forged aluminum scoops will sell for $50 each and come with a lifetime guarantee. An online store is coming soon; with nearly a week left to go, he's already surpassed his Kickstarter goal of $17,500 by over $20,000.
Other people must agree: this is pure genius.