… when complicated and useless looks so much nicer?

TROIKA, producer of innovative promotional gifts, is proud to announce that taping things is no longer the ugliest, most boring and un-chic job on the agenda. The “abrollding” (dinspenser thing) replaces monolithious tape dispensers with pure design-pleasure. Designed by Ding3000, the abrollding has already won numerous design prizes: Designpreis Rheinland-Pfalz 2005, Promotional Gift Award Silber 2006, Good Design Award – Japan 2006, FORM 2006, Prädikat Design Plus 2007. TROIKA assures: Your wave of enthusiasm will not brake!

Well, until you actually try and use this beautiful thingamajig: Firmly grip the handle with one hand, stick the roll of tape onto the rubber core with the other hand, place the poster with your company’s goals (or whatever) on the wall with your free hand, try and get it level, hold it firmly in place, realise you have no hand left to pull off a strip of tape, try and hold the poster with your little finger and your ring finger while pulling off the tape with the other fingers, drop the poster on the floor, swear a little bit, pick the poster up, place it on the wall and get it level again, hold it in place with your elbow, notice the poster slipping away, swear a bit more, decide to rip off four strips of tape first, stick them onto the cupboard next to you, put the adrollding aside, get the poster level AGAIN, pull the strips off the cupboard, remove half of the varnish while doing so, try and fix the poster with the bits that aren’t full of varnish, swear at the abrollding and decide to give it to some poor colleague when it’s time for Secret Santa.

I wish they wouldn’t promote useless pieces of crap like this thing as a DESIGN tape dispenser. No wonder design is widely perceived as chic, expensive decoration.