Make a wish for a spit-free cake.
A Virginia dad has invented a way for kids to blow out their birthday candles without spraying saliva spit onto the icing.
Mark Apelt’s battery-powered Blowzee is activated when someone blows into it, activating a fan that’s supposed to put out the flames.
“The user’s breath is redirected away from the cake,” the Blowzee’s product description says.
Apelt, 44, told The Daily Progress he came up with the idea during a pre-pandemic beer with friends when they discussed a recent party where the 6-year-old sprayed saliva onto the cake.
“I mean, you like cake but suddenly you’re like, ‘no thanks, I’m on a diet’ after you watch that,” Apelt told The Progress in a report published Monday.
“We talked about how we don’t do that with any food other than birthday cake,” he said. “I mean, you don’t do it with hamburgers. No one finishes cooking a hamburger and then blows on it and says, ‘here’s you hamburger.’ OK, you blow on soup, but you blow on your own soup.”
The Blowzee design came after a few other false-start prototypes, including a filtered mask.
It sells for $14.99 according to its website, though its listed on sale for $9.99.
The coronavirus pandemic has made people much more conscious of germ-spreading but as social distancing and mask restrictions are lifting, a return to the old practice of blowing out candles may be expected.
Even before COVID-19 was a concern, some experts found the idea of blowing out candles stomach churning. A 2017 study showed blowing out candles could increase the amount of bacteria on a cake by 1,400 percent.