IKEA’s TROKE mug fills a niche by…uh…not filling a niche

When it comes to gadgets, we know what you like: good design. It’s not enough for a gadget to merely carry out a task; it has to do it thoughtfully . And for many, the essential gizmo for their day-to-day living is the coffee mug.

That’s right, the coffee mug. How many cups do you drink every day? On my heaviest tea days (I’ve never been much of a coffee drinker), I’d easily go through four or five cups. Which, you have to admit, is a lot of cups. And those cups need to be cleaned every now and then. Say, by a dishwasher.

Okay, this is a lot of lead-up, but come on: you try getting two hundred words out of a coffee mug. Anyway, if you’ve ever washed a mug in a dishwasher, you’ve probably noticed that water tends to pool in the bottom, which is often concave. The design gurus at IKEA are all over that like the proverbial white on rice, with their TROKE coffee mug. They just put a notch in the bottom of the mug, which lets the water drain out.

I’d say you could save cash by chipping notches in the bottom of your own mugs, but the IKEA ones cost $0.50, so, well, probably not.

[via Oh Gizmo! ]