Monday, March 27, 2006

Programmable Soda

No St. Louis update yet, but to hold you over until I get back from class here is a very cool idea about containers that can hold many varieties of product in one container.

Programmable Beverage Containers

Ipifini's Programmable Liquid Container technology employs buttons on the container's surface that release additives (flavors, colors, fragrances) into the liquid. Additive buttons allow for the consumer to choose variations of the liquid in the container at the point of consumption. For example, a programmable cola bottle with buttons for lemon, lime, vanilla, and cherry flavors as well as a caffeine button allows for thirty-two potential choices of soda. A programmable paint container with twenty pigment additive buttons allows the consumer to choose from one million colors.


This is a great idea. I like having different varieties of things, but for some reason it annoys me that there are so many types of Coke (Coke Classic, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, all the types with no caffeine, all the types with cherry, some with lime, some with other flavorings) which means that they make around 10 or so different Cokes, and I like a total of 1 of them (Coke Classic). With this system there are only three products, Classic, Diet and Zero, and then whoever buys the coke can decide what kind of Coke they want. This is the best idea ever. (Well at least the best idea that I have heard today.)
The ability to have double caffeine or no caffeine Coke out of the same bottle? Awesome.

1 comment:

hockeyfrog said...

In theory that sounds awesome, but I see a lot of issues with it, such as shipping the product... they'd have to put it in a container in a way that the buttons would not accidentally get pushed... or that people wouldn't.. vandalize? the drinks at the store and whatnot. I know I'm totally the person that gets a drink from a FF and pushes all the buttons down on the lid...

Plus how much extra would we be paying for all those additives that we aren't using?

In theory good idea. Communism, in theory, good idea. Implementation is everything.