I’ve wanted to knock this one out for some time but needed a few moments for research. The latest innovation in bottled fluids is a total failure. I’m talking about French’s Mustard.

A few years ago, the cone cap went to a snazzy new silicone nipple design. Read about it here: News Perspective 07/02 .

Perhaps the biggest breakthrough in the new package design, however, is the bottle’s closure, created by French’s packaging engineer, Dave Maus, specifically to address the issue of crusty caps. Explains Veriga, “The cap incorporates a silicone valve that creates a vacuum seal that sucks the mustard back into the bottle after use.” Advantages, he says, include fresher mustard, less dripping and the elimination of the “gook” on the cap.

I enjoy mustard on bologna, hot dogs, burgers, fries, and use it for cooking. But the recent nipple design is hard to squirt, inaccurate, blobs around the nipple, and is even more crusty than the cone design. People complained about the cone design because regular use left a crust at the rim. But all you had to do was thumb the thing or wipe it off with a napkin.

Why is this a problem: because the latest from Microsoft will not download and update a machine with ease and simplicity (and why must it cost money?), and as everyone knows, mustard and Microsoft are ubiquitous. Just ask the recent apple commercials.

Simplicity of use and design is always an excellent standard to work from (and end with). The subject may be mustard bottles or rockets. Either way, a re-design (Dell) shouldn’t be so blatantly neglectful and absurd as to result in the very thing a company (or country, for that matter) tries to avoid: BS.

I want my cone mustard bottle back and my 8100 keyboard planted onto a new, slimmer, lighter, and sleeker PC, else I’m dashing for the smaller, sleeker, lighter (yet given to smudge) black MacBook (because the MacBook Pro is too damned big. It’s a laptop for bleep’s sake).