When I first read this story about a man who created an invention to keep saggy balls from touching the toilet bowl I had to check around to see if it was real.
Turns out that it is, and for all you saggy-nutted men of the world, you now have a new hero and is name is Vladimir Laurent.
The Coral Springs insurance executive received a patent Tuesday for a device meant to prevent men’s genitalia from touching the bottom of the toilet bowl. Laurent is now the proud holder of U.S. Patent # 9,145,667 B1, which protects the intellectual property for a “toilet sanitary shield for male genitalia.” According to the anatomically, er, correct drawings submitted with the patent application, the device is basically a plastic cup that holds hanging body parts up and away from the bottom of a toilet bowl when squatting. The cup is attached to a suction mechanism that keeps it in place and can rotate through the clever use of a ball-and-socket joint.
“It’s a hygienic product,” Laurent told the South Florida Business Journal in an exclusive interview. “It’s a home product and it’s designed for a specific need, for something that I felt was needed, personally.”
Laurent says he and other partners have invested between $25,000 and $30,000 on developing the product, and that it does have real life applications in the medical field.
There’s even a picture of the product, uh, in action…
Laurent says that he’s taken some of his samples to hospitals and that they have “shown interest.”
And now that he has his patent he plans on producing an initial run of 24,000 of these devices he calls “The Shield.” He plans on selling them at 90 cents a piece, but you’ll have to buy them in bulk.
So is this something you think needed inventing? Myself I have never had an issue with my nuts hitting the toilet bowl, but maybe I’m in the minority? Let me know.
H/T The Ball Report; Man on toilet image by Shutterstock