Ever heard the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? Well, that didn’t stop the following innovators from creating new models of one of the world’s most enduring inventions—the fork. FoxNews.com takes a look at six inventions—some serious and some not-so-serious attempts to see if there is a new fork on the horizon.
1. Dine-Ink
Dine Ink Pen Cap Eating Utensils fork pen Amazon.com Matt (Dine-Ink)
This simple design is made for the cubicle-confined: people who are so restricted to their workspace, they need to keep their eating utensils on hand — literally. Say a workaholic with little time to eat, or a writer who can’t stop eating. This felt like the most unsanitary utensil we tried. The blue utensil tops are so closely modeled to pen caps, it was hard to imagine them as anything else.
You can eat and write without putting down your pencil, but would you want to risk jabbing a pen into your meal -- or worse, your mouth? Also, there was hardly anyone at Fox who actually wanted to write with a ballpoint Bic pen. Call us snobs, but the pen part alone needs a serious upgrade. For those of us who treat our pens like chew toys, this was an unwelcome replacement to the common pen cap.
$11.99 on Amazon
2. NyFork
(Innovative Productions, Inc.)
Fashioned like a regular fork with a pizza cutter on the bottom, it is the most dangerous of the forks we tried. The sharp blade sliced right through thick and thin pizza, making the bottom half of this “invention” a success.
But we were hard pressed to turn it over and eat with the fork side. Some of us just found it too unnatural, while others were thwarted by the blade’s close proximity to their lips. A sloppy eater would need stitches in a matter of moments. And, as the package warns, it’s definitely not safe for children.
But for those who just refuse to eat with their hands — the freshly manicured, the hopeless multitaskers with lips of steel — this is a great buy.
Price per 4-pack varies. Click here for details.
3. Knork Flatware
(Phantom Enterprises)
The KNORK, a portmanteau of knife and fork is touted by Phantom Enterprises as “the first utensil to revolutionize the dining industry in over 1000 years.” We fear not.
This fork has contoured edges and sides just sharp enough to cut through a piece of meat without cutting your mouth when you take a bite. Sounded kind of nifty until we realized it was the same as turning our forks to the side and rocking back and forth. Yes, the invention here is cutting with the side of your fork. Haven’t we been doing this for 1,000 years already?
Yes, it does have some slicing ability, but it needed so much pressure and movement for tougher meats, it could have just been a regular fork.
The fork also has an upward curve designed for the natural way you eat. If you’re an enthusiastic eater, or just moving pretty quickly through your meal, this groove might catch your top teeth on the way out. It gets points for design. It comes in an attractive stainless steel and has a nice weight, so it’s a great replacement for weak utensils.
$24.99 for 4-pack of forks
4. iFork
(iFork)
Ah, another “invention” that has us wondering if people have “create something, anything” on their bucket list. This simplistic little creation keeps your utensils from touching the table
Whoopie! For those of us who are accustomed to removing our utensils from the plate and returning them to the surface of the table (clearly an underreported epidemic), this is the utensil we need!
According to the iFork people, and unbeknownst to most of the world, tables have astonishingly high amounts of bacteria — like kid diaper levels. Really? Where are the iFork folks eating? This is basically a fork with a little metal ball welded onto the bottom that will help your utensil sit above all the invisible disgust on your table.
Some of our forks rolled over anyway. When it did work, we found ourselves submerging the little ball in our food. So what’s the point? Less germs?
Don’t worry, the Indiegogo campaign that sought to raise $25,000 to keep this little venture failed miserably, so we can all go back to eating off the table.
5. Extendable fork
(Amazon)
Okay, admittedly it is a bit of a stretch to rank the extendable fork among legitimate inventions, but even a gag gift needs to do its job. The extendable fork is a two-foot-long fork ideal for food thieves at the dinner table. If you tend to want to eat off your neighbor’s plate then you might be in the market for this kind of item. But beware the version we tried has a solid handle with a flimsy fork at the end.
When we tried to pilfer food from our colleagues we found it hard to hold an item at a distance and the flatness of the fork made it impossible to scoop. We just ended up flicking food around and when we did get a piece attached, it dropped smack dab in the middle of the dinner table where someone had to retrieve it by hand. Shhh. Don’t let the iFork folks find out.
$5 on Amazon
6. The Original Pasta Fork
(Supreme Housewares)
If you’re a serious linguini eater this might be the fork for you. It’s an unusually long three-pronged fork with a twisted handle to help you roll up the pasta without rolling your wrist. And it works. You just place your fingers at the top of the fork and slide them down to the bottom. It makes eating pasta fun.
It’s a brilliant quick fix for impatient pasta eaters who lack some range of motion in their wrists. If you tend to drop your fork, chop your spaghetti, or scoop and slurp, this is just the fork for you.
4 for $24.95 on Amazon
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