This Clever Mug Keeps Your Tea Bag from Sinking

We’re in love with the totally sweet design of the Tea Cup SlingsHot — which essentially solves one of the most annoying issues that tea drinkers often encounter: The moment the tea bag string falls into your hot tea and is lost forever in watery oblivion. It makes for a sorry sight as dismayed tea drinkers attempt to retrieve their dignity without scalding their fingers.

The Tea Cup SlingsHOT works by inserting the string through the groove — so you can easily pull the teabag up and back against the edge of the mug in case it does fall in, while also squeezing all of the liquid out of the bag.

A few criticisms though, courtesy of the commenters on Yanko Design:

User K. Denny writes:

A very clever solution and an attractive mug. Unfortunately it’s missing the mark on a few points. First, the previously mentioned problem of strings detaching from bags. Second, when making tea, you should not squeeze the bag – that makes for bitter tea. Finally, simply looping the string around the mug’s handle keeps it from falling in, so was there ever an actual problem to solve here? Perhaps a cup with a tiny cleat, hook or knob to wrap the string around would do it.

And user L-J brought up another point:

What stops the tea from being channeled down the outside of the handle, as the tea is squeezed from the teabag?

OK, so there may be a few pitfalls — including the difficulty of cleaning this beauty — and we have yet to see this lovely design by Samir Sufi come to fruition. ‘Til then, we’ll keep our eyes peeled and our teabags and kettles ready.

H/T Yanko Design