Ketchup or tomato paste as a food, condiment, or a medicine has been around for over 300 years. It has taken mankind the better part of a century to find something better than the traditional glass bottle that often times makes actually getting at the ketchup impossible. With the invention of the upside down squeezable bottle all of the problems were solved with one design.

The new problem being created by paper companies are new designs for dispensing this ever so popular product. I don’t think anyone ever just uses one of the little cups from the past that was filled with one pump from a dispenser. I wasn’t surprised and was actually quite happy when I started seeing things more closely resembling a tub of ketchup with making me carry far less than the original design. On a recent trip to a Hardee’s (don’t worry someone else was paying!), I saw possibly the worst design of these ketchup cups (pictured). They had the base the size of a 50 cent piece, but were less than a 1/4″ high. Ultimately leaving you with a large surface area of ketchup, but not much volume. After the swipe of a fry or two it indeed had splashed out like a pool onto the table. Condiments don’t need presentation, rather only functionality. Maybe with a little luck these will disappear as quickly as I found them.

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