If the “long egg” from our previous post, was a deliberate deformation of eggs that consumers, for the most part, were never meant to be aware of—(the whole point, being to create optimal and natural looking egg slices)—there was also an invention, introduced in the 1970s that invited consumers to participate in deforming the egg’s natural shape. The preferred embodiment of this concept? Cube-shaped egg makers.
Eggs on Edge. A good egg, concluded a former knitwear manufacturer in Miami, is a square egg. At least when it is hard-boiled and prone in its natural shape to roll across a plate. Thus Stan Pargman set up the Square Egg Co. to make a clear acrylic contraption that encases a cooked, peeled egg and, after ten minutes in a refrigerator, releases it reshaped. Is the world ready for it? Apparently Los Angeles is. When 1,000 of the gadgets went on sale in May Co. department stores there last month, they were snapped up in one day. A reorder of 5,000 went almost as quickly. The buyers did not seem to care that they could immobilize wandering egg-shaped eggs simply by cutting them in half —and still get a square meal.
Odds & Ends, Time Magazine
Monday, Nov. 29, 1976
More of a novelty item, than a serious effort to solve “the problem” of hard boiled eggs rolling around on plates. And although The Square Egg Company’s owner cites this as his reason for making the product, one must bear in mind that he also has stated elsewhere, that square eggs went well with contemporary furniture.
Nowhere, however, in any of the 1970s articles about “The Square Egg Maker” is it mentioned that it was Masashi Nakagawa—(not Stan Pargman)—who invented this device. (Nakagawa’s patent drawings, appear on the right)
In his patent, Nakagawa explains that the problem he sought to solve with his “Apparatus for Deforming Boiled Egg” was the problem of creating ornamental boiled eggs. “It is very troublesome and time-consuming to change the original natural shape by cutting it with a knife…” he writes, stating that his invention’s true raison d’être was “…to provide an apparatus and a method for changing a whole boiled egg into an aesthetic cubic shape.”
“The Square Egg Maker” in black & white box from: Ms. Bunch O’Junk’s Etsy shop
(Nakagawa’s patent and more egg-deformer cartons, after the fold…)