An attention-grabbing Kickstarter campaign attempting to reinvent the measuring spoon has turned into a mad, mad, mad, mad world for backers after years of broken promises and thousands of missing spoons.
The mind-boggling design for the measuring spoon first wowed the Internet in 2016 after a video promoting the Kickstarter campaign went viral and spawned widespread media coverage fawning over the unique design.
Known as Polygons, the three-in-one origami measuring spoons have a flat design that can be easily folded into common teaspoon and tablespoon measurements. “Regular spoons are so 3000 BC,” a tagline on the project’s website joked.
For gadget geeks, it’s a neat example of thinking outside of the box, and fans found it appealing to potentially replace a drawer full of spoons with a more futuristic-looking compact tool. Most backers signed up for a single set, paying $8–$12 each, while hundreds wanted up to 25 sets, a handful ordered 50, and just one backer signed up for 100. Delivery was initially promised by 2017, supposedly shipping to anywhere in the world.
But it’s been about nine years since more than 30,000 backers flocked to the Kickstarter campaign—raising more than $1 million and eclipsing Polygons’ $10,000 goal. And not only have nearly half of the backers not received their spoons, but now, after years of updates falsely claiming that the spoons had been shipped, some backers began to wonder if the entire campaign might be a fraud. They could see that Polygons are currently being sold on social media and suspected that the maker might be abusing backers’ funds to chase profits, seemingly without ever seriously intending to fulfill their orders.
One Kickstarter backer, Caskey Hunsader, told Ars that he started doubting if the spoon’s designer—an inventor from India, Rahul Agarwal—was even a real person.
Ars reached out to verify Agarwal’s design background. We confirmed that, yes, Agarwal is a real designer, and, yes, he believes there is a method to the madness when it comes to his Kickstarter campaign, which he said was never intended to be a scam or fraud. He forecasted that 2025 is likely the year that backers’ wait will finally end.
