Popinator 'Pops' Popcorn Right Into Your Mouth!

If you are like most kids than your favorite way to eat popcorn is by shooting it into your mouth, one kernel at a time. However, unless you have an extremely accurate aim, it can be a frustrating experience and a little messy, to say the least. Now, the makers of Popcorn Indiana have come up with an ingenious solution.

Called Popinator, at first glance it looks like any normal popcorn maker. However, look closer and you will notice that instead of a built-in popping device, it features a microphone system and launcher. Welcome to the world's first voice-activated popcorn launcher, a gadget designed to change the way people consume the world's most popular snack.

All the user has to do is fill up the Popinator with popcorn of their choice, sit back and say 'pop'. On hearing that magic word, the binaural microphone system will detect the direction the sound came from, flip open the small opening and launch a piece of popcorn right into the person's mouth. Given that each popcorn kernel is a different size and weight, the piece may not land right inside the mouth, but close enough that a little maneuvering, will do the trick - Which in our opinion, makes the whole exercise ever more fun!

However, like most cool things, the snack company says the Popinator is for now just an in house project that its employees are having fun with. They are not sure if it will ever be available to the general public - Unless of course the amazingly positive reviews they have been getting so far, continue. So, be sure to let them know if you like this fun machine and want to see it in the store near you, by adding your comments below. We for one can envision a future where movie theaters ask you to switch of your electronic devices and leave your Popinators at home - Can't you?

UPDATE As Of 10/12/12

Alas, everything that is too good to be true, usually is. Turns out that the Popinator is not quite as cool as it first appeared to be. The machine is not voice activated, but remote-controlled. But the good news is that it has received so much notoriety that the people that created this one are actually thinking about creating one that is voice controlled! We'll see if that ever happens, but for now we will just have to resign ourselves to eating popcorn the old-fashioned way - Picking it up one kernel at a time.

Resources: Gizmag.com,engadget.com, cnn.com