# Why haven't they done this yet \[product suggestions\]. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 14, 2012, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200 "2012-07-14T14:15:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/41 "2012-07-16T03:07:06Z")
Standard charger cables in different colours. The plugs \*and \*the cables too, preferably, but the cables at least. You know how Android phones all have the same chargers, and there are ‘kettle leads’ that are the same for a lot of devices, but they’re almost all black with a few that are grey, and Apple’s are white? I’d pay good money for a charger cable that I could identify from the mess of other cables. Hell, you could even make them in team colours. ‘Hey, Jason, this is your charger - it’s the blue and white Chelsea one.’ Easy to identify and a little personal addition to an otherwise fairly impersonal birthday present of a new phone. I’ve been touting this online for maybe 12 years now and am still surprised that nobody’s actually doing it. Is there some technological reason for the lack of different colours of chargers and/or cables? ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/42 "2012-07-16T03:11:35Z")
I’d like to see a bicycle “horn” that uses a recordable chip so you can make your own custom “warning sounds”. Forget the mundane “honk honk”,“ring ring” or the boring old “on your left!”-- with today’s technology you could have multiple options for different occasions. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/43 "2012-07-16T03:11:48Z")
> [@Nunzio\_Tavulari](#): > > Some smart aleck kid would think it was funny to pretend to shut the door on his mom and give her 2nd degree burns on the side of her face. Or the dog would hit it. Or your floor is crooked and it closes by itself. > > It sounds like a good idea but I don’t think it’s safe. I was frequently hit by the side-opening oven door when I worked in a cafe in Berlin, because the oven was next to the door to the kitchen and if you were bending down to open the oven then the people coming in to the kitchen couldn’t see you - I had burns up my left arm for months. Everybody there did - it was like a mark of service. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/44 "2012-07-16T03:12:27Z")
> [@Shakes](#): > > A mouthwash that has a 30sec count down timer on the lid. So what happens if you swish for 34 seconds? ---
**Author:** ![Zep\_Tepi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/59ef9b/32.png) [@Zep\_Tepi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zep_Tepi)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/45 "2012-07-16T03:18:23Z")
When I was a child in England, way back in the 1940s, we had a gas oven in our kitchen and that had a side opening door. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/46 "2012-07-16T04:36:45Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > So what happens if you swish for 34 seconds? The Tooth Gremlin will come and shoot you in the face. (Then steal your wallet.) ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/47 "2012-07-16T09:10:25Z")
> [@Tamex](#): > > I would have to imagine that, even if you throw the little sliver of soap away (which many people do not), it would have to be much more environmentally friendly to do so than to throw away a little block of plastic every time. > > I did see clear bars of soap once that had a 20-sided die imbedded inside each one. I think the idea was that you give it to your favorite hygienically-challenged geek who would then use the soap regularly in the hopes that they could soon get to the die inside to use with their favorite role-playing game. No idea if this was actually effective :). I tried to come up with a similar idea for anime conventions, but I really couldn’t come up with anything similarly appealing to that demographic, able to be encased in soap without damage, and cheap enough to be financially feasible. When I was a little kid, there was some kind of soap that had a small plastic toy inside it. There was also a soap that was shaped like some sort of critter, and when it got wet it developed a fuzz. My parents bought that soap one time, and I hid it, because I knew that soap gets smaller and eventually vanishes, and I didn’t want the critter to die. I was pretty young. > [@SciFiSam](#): > > Standard charger cables in different colours. The plugs \*and \*the cables too, preferably, but the cables at least. > > You know how Android phones all have the same chargers, and there are ‘kettle leads’ that are the same for a lot of devices, but they’re almost all black with a few that are grey, and Apple’s are white? I’d pay good money for a charger cable that I could identify from the mess of other cables. > > Hell, you could even make them in team colours. ‘Hey, Jason, this is your charger - it’s the blue and white Chelsea one.’ Easy to identify and a little personal addition to an otherwise fairly impersonal birthday present of a new phone. > > I’ve been touting this online for maybe 12 years now and am still surprised that nobody’s actually doing it. Is there some technological reason for the lack of different colours of chargers and/or cables? You can buy tags for this sort of thing. Or you can use duct or electrical tape. My husband knows when I’ve repaired something around the house, because I tend to use either purple or leopard spotted duct tape. ---
**Author:** ![Tamex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ccd318/32.png) [@Tamex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamex)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/48 "2012-07-16T10:43:20Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Standard charger cables in different colours. The plugs \*and \*the cables too, preferably, but the cables at least. > > You know how Android phones all have the same chargers, and there are ‘kettle leads’ that are the same for a lot of devices, but they’re almost all black with a few that are grey, and Apple’s are white? I’d pay good money for a charger cable that I could identify from the mess of other cables. > > Hell, you could even make them in team colours. ‘Hey, Jason, this is your charger - it’s the blue and white Chelsea one.’ Easy to identify and a little personal addition to an otherwise fairly impersonal birthday present of a new phone. > > I’ve been touting this online for maybe 12 years now and am still surprised that nobody’s actually doing it. Is there some technological reason for the lack of different colours of chargers and/or cables? Someone’s already doing this. I have an Apple charger cable that is bright green that I picked up at Office Depot last year. I don’t think they had cables for other phone brands, though. ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/49 "2012-07-16T13:44:28Z")
I thinkj it was Fairy Chat Mom (possibly Eve?) who so perfectly described the practice of taking that tiny sliver of soap and attaching it to the new bar of soap like a parasite. That’s what I do. So having a tiny insert would just annoy me. Regarding toothpaste; well I just run the bottom half of the tube over the edge of the counter (like when you’re trying to make a piece of paper curly) and that forces the toothpaste into the top half. I then fold the tube at that point. I rarely have a problem with toothpaste mushing back to the bottom of the tube. I actually like the razor idea. My current method of replacing my razor is when I realize I’ve hacked my face up because the blades are dull. ---
**Author:** ![Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7993a0/32.png) [@Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamaika_a_jamaikaiake)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/50 "2012-07-17T04:18:27Z")
Am I the only man here who uses the same (Gilette, triple blade) razor for 6 months or so? ---
**Author:** ![Zep\_Tepi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/59ef9b/32.png) [@Zep\_Tepi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zep_Tepi)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/51 "2012-07-17T04:50:38Z")
The toothpaste idea came about from having a wife who will insist on squeezing the tube from either the middle or the top. You have no idea how this bugs me, but in fairness I have put up with this for the last 45 years of married life. In the good old days when toothpaste came in metal tubes they could be wound up from the base and did not unravel when squeezed. Today, these metal tubes could be recycled as against the plastic ones that I am sure are not put in the recycling bag but just discarded. ---
**Author:** ![Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nunzio_Tavulari)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/52 "2012-07-17T05:04:54Z")
> [@Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](#): > > Am I the only man here who uses the same (Gilette, triple blade) razor for 6 months or so? Yes. Yes, you are. Do you only use it to shave your forehead? I shave once a week; neck, cheeks and under my lower lip. I use a Gillette Mach 3. I store it in in alcohol so it doesn’t corrode. After a month the razor is dull. I can usually suffer through it for another two weeks before I snap on a new blade. ---
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/53 "2012-07-17T13:59:51Z")
> [@Zep\_Tepi](#): > > The toothpaste idea came about from having a wife who will insist on squeezing the tube from either the middle or the top. You have no idea how this bugs me, but in fairness I have put up with this for the last 45 years of married life. In the good old days when toothpaste came in metal tubes they could be wound up from the base and did not unravel when squeezed. Today, these metal tubes could be recycled as against the plastic ones that I am sure are not put in the recycling bag but just discarded. Dunno if you care, but the reason for the switch to plastic tubes is that they are cheaper and easier to produce. People are more concerned about toothpaste being cheap than exactly how efficiently they can use it. If there was enough demand for it in metal tubes, we’d produce it - plenty of other products use them. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/54 "2012-07-17T14:07:03Z")
> [@Steophan](#): > > If there was enough demand for it in metal tubes, we’d produce it - plenty of other products use them. How would a consumer go about registering that demand? The plastic toothpaste tube is one of my major malfunctions with consumer products. If there was a toothpaste in a metal tube, I would buy it. ---
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/55 "2012-07-17T14:12:05Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > How would a consumer go about registering that demand? The plastic toothpaste tube is one of my major malfunctions with consumer products. If there was a toothpaste in a metal tube, I would buy it. Contact the company who’s toothpaste you buy. In my opinion, there won’t be enough people who would pay a higher price for metal tubes - but sending an email to whichever brand you use won’t hurt, and if enough people do it, it might change. ---
**Author:** ![Woeg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/df705f/32.png) [@Woeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Woeg)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/56 "2012-07-17T14:26:06Z")
Adobe, why, oh why, can’t Illustrator export to CGM format any more? It used to - why’d you take it away? The defense industry is unfortunately tied to the CGM format, and not being able to export to it means we have to use software that isn’t as adaptable or user-friendly as Illustrator, all because you decided to make you product less useful. Why haven’t you fixed this yet? EVERY defense illustrator I know would love to be able to use your product, buy your licenses, make you money. Why Adobe? WHY??? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/57 "2012-07-17T14:31:07Z")
I mentioned this idea on this board years ago; it was actually marketed briefly, but apparently didn’t take off. Well, I still think it’s a great idea. Ready? Here it is: Pre-measured peanut butter sticks, like sticks of shortening or butter, for baking. ---
**Author:** ![Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tastes_of_chocolate/32/3232_2.png) [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/58 "2012-07-17T20:24:08Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Standard charger cables in different colours. The plugs \*and \*the cables too, preferably, but the cables at least. Around here, Walgreens has started doing this. $5 will get you a USB to micro-USB or USB to Apple cord. Another $5 will get you a wall outlet to USB converter.$5 more for a pair of earbuds. All available in 5 or so different colors. Lime green works well for me. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/59 "2012-07-17T20:31:34Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > I mentioned this idea on this board years ago; it was actually marketed briefly, but apparently didn’t take off. Well, I still think it’s a great idea. Ready? Here it is: > > Pre-measured peanut butter sticks, like sticks of shortening or butter, for baking. A couple of years ago, there was a company selling peanut butter in plastic-wrapped slices, much like how Kraft American Cheese is packaged. But that was mostly for sandwiches, not for baking. ---
**Author:** ![MetroGnome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e7dd6/32.png) [@MetroGnome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MetroGnome)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200/60 "2012-07-18T04:55:47Z")
I just posted this as a side note in another thread before realizing this thread existed: Sock garters/suspenders that clip to your socks on one end, and the bottom of your dress shirts at the other. That way, it keeps your socks up and your shirts tucked in. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-they-done-this-yet-product-suggestions/628200.md?page=4)