Brilliant Silly Innovations

BreakingModern – Innovation is a heralded quality in today’s society. Companies strive day after day to take a known concept and turn it on its head – like Steve Jobs did with the cell phone, or Elon Musk and the electric car, or the solar industry, or even space flight.

Yes, Musk has set a goal to change our world, but what about the innovations that hold a little less weight – you know, the brilliantly silly innovations. The ones that make you laugh?

Pee No More

IG St. Pauli e.V., a community group in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg, Germany, has recently achieved (relative) greatness. St. Pauli is a hotspot for nightclubbing – and with any good nightlife comes a good deal of late-night urination.

The group decided to coat the walls of the neighborhood with Ultra Ever-Dry, a hydrophobic substance that sends any liquid applied with force splashing away. So that drunken, late-night piss has resulted in a fair amount of splash-back, coating the assailants in their own urine, rather than the lovely streets of Hamburg.

Video: Hi-tech paint gives urinating revelers a soaking

Now, if we just applied this to most walls around nightclubs, we could keep a city free of that ubiquitous urine smell. Pretty innovative. But it’s also expensive – roughly 500 euros (around $700) for 65 square feet of the stuff. Maybe it’ll be in the city’s budget someday, rather than the citizen’s.

The Inflatable Pub

Yeah, you read right. From Innovations X-treme (dare I say more?) comes the blow-up bar. Perfect for river floats, international waters and the canal crawl. Or a classy night on the lawn.

The company claims the pub has been to (and served well in!) every continent in the world, from Super Bowl bashes to radio events. You could douse the pub in Ultra-Ever Dry to keep your friends from peeing on it too!

Leash ’Em!

It’s not exactly new, but the child leash serves as a perfect silly innovation (maybe not so brilliant). Kids are curious, dogs are curious. Kids pee everywhere, dogs pee everywhere. Leash the kid, and you’ll never wonder where they ran off to, or got in, or what sort of stranger they just befriended.

In case you needed endless examples, this site has you covered.

The Jetsons

To end we should at least mention the flying car that debuted at SXSW 2015. AeroMobil, the company that made the contraption, has made headlines everywhere with the announcement that the car, dubbed “The Roadster,” could be commercially available by 2017.

This is more in line with Musk, but we have to wonder about the silliness of such a thing. There are an endless number of details to work out – like where you can and cannot land and take off, where to get such fuel and what sort of licensing you need – but the future is here. Or, it’s close. Check it out below.

Video: AeroMobil 3.0 - official video

Any brilliantly silly innovations I missed? Of course there are! Let me know in the comments.

For BMod, I’m Daniel Zweier.

First Image: Gotta Pee! By Jon-Eric Melsæter via Flickr

Second Image: Courtesy of Inflatable Pub

Third Image: Child leashes by marymariachi via Flickr

Featured/Header Image: Light bulbs by André Mouraux via Flickr

Daniel Zweier

Author: Daniel Zweier

Based in Oakland, Daniel Zweier covers culture, travel and tech here at BreakingModern. Follow him on Twitter @dbzweier and on G+ at +DanielZweier

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