The price of an iPhone 6 starts at $199, but a new Kickstarter campaign offers a cheaper, although not so mobile, solution for a person's communication needs.
ADA Sport has created the Apple-inspired iCups, a pair of silver paper cups attached together by a simple piece of string. The look resembles the classic can-and-string telephones made by children.
"It introduces an entirely new user interface that is based on simplicity combined with form and function," the iCups' creators wrote on the product's website. "iCups also ushers in an era of device power and sophistication that has not been seen in a mobile device since 1664, which completely redefines how users can communicate with one another."
The "ultimate iRonic gag gift" provides customers with three different lengths of string. The 64-inch string comes standard, the 32-inch string provides for intimate conversation, and the 128-feet string allows for a long-distance relationship.
The iCups began as an animated iPhone parody, but ADA Sport co-founder Mike Mukhametshin decided to market the cups as the perfect holiday prank present. He created a Kickstarter campaign that surpassed its $10,000 goal earlier this month, and then launched an iCups Luxury edition with a $3000 goal by Oct. 28.
"With everyone's help on Kickstarter, we're going to change the world and put a major dent in the gag gift universe!" Mukhametshin said. "OK, so maybe we won't change the world, but we can bring a lot of laughs to our loved ones this holiday season.
The luxury cups come packaged in a black box, similar to other Apple products, and costs $19.99. The iCups classic edition comes in a white box and costs $9.99. Each phone also comes with an "interactive manual" and illustrated booklet of "25 reasons why iCups is superior to any smartphone on the market."
The Kickstarter page lists possible recipients for the gag gift. They encourage giving iCups to some who wants the actual iPhone 6, a "technologically-challenged parent or grandparent," or a mother who wants to communicate with her baby in the womb.
Unlike other mobile devices, iCups has no battery to recharge, apps to download, or screen to crack. It can serve dual purposes such as a drinking cup or sand shovel.
iCups has received celebrity endorsements from Apple co-creator Steve Wozniak and Apple CEO Tim Cook. A Bono impersonator also posed with the cups saying, "And we promise this time around we aren't going to put the album on it," alluding to U2's disastrous album release "Songs of Innocence" on iTunes.
The first order of iCups will ship in November, a month before Christmas.
