Hasta La Ideas

With nearly half a million dollars in funding and just under five days to go, Lorenzo Maggiore’s BUG-A-SALT is on track to be IndieGoGo’s most lucrative campaign ever. It’s been making gizmo / gadget / public-interest-story rounds for over a month now, since it launched and quietly went viral to the delight of the blogosphere and the nearly 10,000 backers looking to take pest control into their own hands.

Suffice it to say that Core need not co-sign to help Maggiore—who is not a designer but a Santa Monica-based visual artist, by the way—cross the threshold.

But what is it that makes the BUG-A-SALT so compelling, a runaway hit as opposed to a shot in the dark? Is there a darker subtext to the fact that unmistakable typology of a lethal weapon has been adapted for home use to be a palatable (no pun intended)—if not altogether playful—solution to a household problem?

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