#153: The Pizza Saver
Pizza saver or doll’s house table? You decide.
What is this strange small white tripod? And why is it sitting on a pizza box? For anyone who has ordered takeaway pizza, this will be a familiar object. This is the pizza saver, more affectionately known as a pizza table, or as pizza’s guardian angel.
They sit in the middle of your takeaway pizza, protecting it from the threat of losing half of its topping, which has a habit of sticking onto the inside of the cheap cardboard lid. Most of us will have briefly appreciated their success, before picking them off and chucking them in the bin. They had done their job, and now it was time to dispose of them, as you are about to dispose of this delicious pizza.
Yet I write a blog on objects, so how could I not pause for a moment, and consider this little object, so useful, yet so simply designed?
Pizza savers are simple objects, made with one function in mind: to stop the top of the pizza box collapsing onto the pizza it contains. They were patented in 1985 by Carmela Vitale (as described in song by comedian John Finnemore), and while they may be small, they continue to save takeaway pizzas everywhere.
But while they may be made with that one function in mind, humans are a creative species, and new functions can always be found. It is the world of upcycling — recycling, not to be destroyed and remade, but to be reused in new and innovative ways.
So, what do you think can be made out of a pizza saver? There is the popular doll’s house table option. But flip it over and you have a phone holder, or a place to store your thread as you unwind it. Or are you trying to papier-mâché a ball and don’t know where to put it to dry? Then reach for your trusty pizza saver.
Others have opted for more elaborate upcycling, where you wouldn’t know at first glance what this adorable doll’s house object was made of.
I had a little play myself. If you stick two of them together, legs touching, you can make the outside of a classic hourglass case. I imagine if you wrapped it in paper you could make a long triangular prism, though I’m not sure what I would do with it then. Maybe make a fake Toblerone box? Or, if you have four or five of these to hand, they also work as a laptop holder, perfect for any laptops which have a habit of over-heating.
My favourite of these ideas is the phone holder, which I have tried and tested, and plan to use the next time I am watching YouTube videos on my phone. But I am sure that there are many more ways in which these unassuming little objects can be used, so the next time you order a takeaway pizza, I challenge you to upcycle your pizza saver into a new and creative tool.
