English Teens Hope to Cure Avocado Hand with New Tool
Their award-winning “Avogo” is coming to Kickstarter soon.
Image: Westend61/Getty Images
If you’re an avocado fan, odds are that you’ve had a close encounter with injury while slicing, dicing or destoning that fatty fruit. Now, a group of teens hopes to send this “avocado hand” phenomenon the way of the dinosaurs.
Say hello to the “Avogo,” an ergonomic avocado slicer with a safety-friendly curved blade that’s going to save the world’s hands from knife wounds. Created by four teenagers from Brighton College in England, the Avogo was so impressive that it recently won the London Design Museum’s Design Ventura challenge—a contest for students to test their design and entrepreneurial skills.
To use the Avogo, you simply pierce the skin of an avocado with the blade until it makes contact with the stone, then drag it around until it connects with the original cut. Twist the halves apart, carefully poke the stone with the Avogo’s blade, and pop it out. It’s a lot like slicing an avocado normally, just with a smaller blade.
The device was inspired by an avocado hand wound sustained by one of its creators, the 14-year-old Shiven Patel. The students knew that their pewter prototype had potential, according to the Daily Mail, because Patel’s parents actually continued to use it to slice their avocados.
The Avogo will be produced for the London Design Museum’s gift shop as part of the Ventura challenge, but the young entrepreneurs don’t intend to stop there. They are currently setting up a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for manufacturing, and they hope to sell the tools for the equivalent of about $14.
They will donate the profits to charity, though likely not one that deals with avocado hand injuries. Because those don’t exist.
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