The Batter Blaster Breakfast

One recurring feature in this newsletter is that I occasionally introduce you to folks from my inventor portrait project. I’ve mostly been sharing them chronologically, but the truth is that I recently skipped a couple. They just didn’t have stories that were strong enough for their own newsletter. So today I’m going to tell you about the next inventor on the list, and then I will back-fill with two inventors that I skipped to bring us back on track. You get three inventor mini-stories for the price of one.

Pancakes in a Can

Inventor #37 in my series was Sean O’Connor, inventor of Batter Blaster, the pancake batter that comes in a can. He got the idea after making a mess of the kitchen trying to make pancakes one morning to surprise his wife. He topped them off with whipped cream and wondered why the batter itself couldn’t just come in a nice container like the whipped cream. Eureka! The idea for pancakes in a can was born.

I hear you saying: Eww, gross. Pancakes in a can? Like spray cheese? Well, kinda.

It looked and worked like spray cheese. But it was perishable, and had a short shelf life, and was completely organic. So it wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.

It came in a huge variety of flavors. And I have to say, it was really delicious. The chocolate pancakes tasted like chocolate cake. In a can.

Unfortunately, it was hard for customers to find. Where would you look for refrigerated pancake batter in the grocery store? Pancake mix isn’t usually refrigerated, so where would it go? With the eggs? Biscuits? Would people know what it is when they happen upon it?

Batter Blaster had a lot of fans, but it had a problem of needing to educate customers. And in 2012, they ran into financial issues they couldn’t overcome. Sadly, Sean closed down the business. (And honestly, at this point I’m not sure how I feel about disposing of an empty can after cooking just a couple dozen pancakes. It feels a bit wasteful to me.)

Here’s a video I made about Sean and Batter Blaster:

But wait! The story doesn’t end there! A couple years later, Sean’s business partner Nate Steck brought the product back as Nate’s Pancakes. But I don’t think Nate’s Pancakes are around anymore, either. Strangely, it appears that Nate has pivoted his business to just two core products: marshmallows in a can and bitcoin mining. Sigh.

Cannibal Cockroaches

They say that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. But nobody says anything about what happens if you build a better cockroach trap. That’s what John Garretson attempted to do. He was inventor #35 in my project.

John Garretson designed a cockroach trap that captured roaches in a small cartridge and held them there. His idea was that the cockroaches would eat each other so that they don’t take up so much space as intact cockroaches, and the trap could hold a lot more roaches before it needs to be emptied. Seriously. From the product description:

Please enjoy this macro photo of dead, partially-eaten roaches:

Then you just dispose of the cartridge and put a new one in the trap.

Alas, the world did not beat a path to John’s door.

The Gadget Stalker

Inventor #33 in my project was a guy named Matt Coiro. (I think he reads this newsletter sometimes. Hi, Matt!).

Matt’s name popped up a lot as I was researching inventors. He was active in the inventor community forums. And when I read about the guy who invented the wheeled snow shovel, I saw that Matt was a sales rep for that inventor. Then I noticed that Matt’s forum signature was frequently changing, promoting a razor blade designed for bald heads, and a gadget that makes it easier to clean up the leaves in your yard, and a bottle opener you wear like a ring, and a dozen other things that other people had invented. I was a little confused what his involvement was with all these companies.

It turns out that Matt didn’t have anything to do with any of these inventions. He was just a big fan of inventors. He described himself as a “gadget stalker”:

Matt did have one invention to his name. It was a product you could use to clean the bed of your pickup truck. It had grooves in it that matched the grooves on the truck bed. He called it the Groovy Tool.

Matt wasn’t a big success, but he was a nice guy who enjoyed celebrating other people’s inventions and their successes. He wasn’t a big inventor, but he was a big part of the inventor community. It was nice to see him giving other people that kind of support.

Now that we’re caught up on inventors, I’ll give you one hint about the next inventor I’ll be featuring: He’s more prominent than these three, and the location where I filmed my interview with him has since been dismantled and moved into the Smithsonian. Any guesses?

Well that’s it for another newsletter. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time!

David