In-Your-Vehicle French Fry Holder

$9.99 from Improvements Catalog

Unbelievable. Someone actually invented something so ridiculous as a molded piece of plastic that fits in a car’s cupholder and is designed to hold a cardboard French fry container. I’m speechless. I mean, what’s worse, that there is some poor slob out there who eats so many fries in his car that he felt the need to make a prototype or that there is apparently a market for it?

Why would anyone possible need this? Now, I’m not going to pretend like I don’t enjoy on-the-road fries from time to time. But I do what any normal person does: I put the container either between my legs (depending on how hot it is), in my change-holding bin with the cigarette lighter, or directly in the cupholder.

That last technique usually works pretty well. Now, I’ll admit that I’ve had a couple of instances where, as I’m stuffing my face with a greasy disgusting burger, I’ve almost wrecked my car and didn’t only because I performed a last-second preventative maneuver. And when I did slam on the breaks or jerk the wheel, the fries went flying. That’s not fun. They get dirty, I can’t reach them when they’re all over the floorboard, and the car smells like stale fast-food grease for a week. But by damn, that is not a good enough reason to invest in a device whose only purpose is to hold fries in the car to prevent such catastrophes. And to top it off, I notice that in the product description, a guarantee of “no fry flyage” is conspicuously missing—which leads me to believe that it can’t even help prevent the bigger in-vehicle fry messes.

Here’s the worst part. It’s advertised as being so great that it “even has a clip-on ketchup cup.” That’s terrible. So I’m supposed to empty little packages of ketchup into the clip and then, what, put it in the dishwasher? If that ketchup stays in there, it will get really foul really quick.

But here’s the deal: If you eat so many fries in your car that you can’t go without this, you are a pathetic, sad sack who needs to focus on solving your BIG problems, like your heart-health, rather than something as asinine as “where should I put this jumbo Biggie sized box of fries?”

This Solution Without a Problem just really makes me boil. Consider the following scenario:
§ You buy some fries at a drive-thru window.
§ Who the hell buys fries without a soda? You also buy a soda.
§ I don’t know what kind of car you have, but most cars either have one or two cupholders within reach of the driver.

If you have one cupholder and you bought this fry holder, where in blazes are you supposed to put your drink? In this case, your fries would go in the fry holder, which takes up the cupholder, and your drink goes between your legs. That doesn’t solve anything. In fact, it CREATES a problem rather than solves one.

If you have two cupholders, just put your box of fries in the spare cupholder. It’ll fit in there good enough and you’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror for not being the type of loser who needs a portable fry tote.

Solution without a problem scale: 5 out of 5