The four P’s of marketing are product, price, place (as in, where the product – or service – is available), and promotion. Marketers should have a role in designing the product, ostensibly because we know what the public wants. So who, I’m wondering, wants a cocktail carousel?

Let’s look at the original product: a bottle of booze. In order to dispense the contents, you must twist off the top and tilt it over a shot glass. When the glass is full, you straighten the bottle out and twist the top back on.

With the cocktail carousel, you take the original product, twist off the top, attach the dispensing apparatus, turn the bottle upside down, fit it into the carousel, hold a shot glass under the dispenser, and flip the lever. Wow! That’s so much easier!

Maybe the product is intended to help after you’ve been using it awhile, say after your fourth shot when tipping that bottle over a tiny glass gets trickier. On the other hand, according to the description, the red levers allow 1.5 shots to come out, the black ones provide “continuous flow.” Hilarity no doubt ensues as we try to remember if it’s the red one or the black one. And where is the red one anyway? How about if we just lay down under the black one with our mouths open?

I know this will probably be a popular item under the tree, what with people doing shots like nobody’s business in these tough economic times. Still, I can’t help but feel the cocktail carousel answers a question no one asked.