Kitchen gadgets review: Scoopsaw – part sex toy, part street weapon

Flesh-eating gadget … the Scoopsaw. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

What?

Scoopsaw (Chefn, £9.99) is a serrated blade housed in hard plastic sheath, shaped into a shallow scoop at its extremity.

Why?

You think you know how to handle your melons. Think again.

Well?

Scoopsaw sounds like the poorly sketched antagonist of a horror franchise squarely in its dog days. Nightscream 8 or something. Perhaps a serial killer whose modus operandi is based on civil war-era field surgery techniques. He finds victims to “cut, clean and cube effortlessly” and leaves a bloody apron as a calling card!

The truth is more prosaic, but more useful. It’s a tool that helps with the annoying parts of squash prep, which is all of it. Because that’s the thing about squash, pumpkin or any autumnal gourd – they’re hard. The shell is hard, the flesh is hard, the only soft bits are the messy seeds, which you throw away. A good knife helps, but their shape – long, round, often corrugated – means a straightforward cut isn’t possible. They’re one of those foods, like pineapple, crab or tacos, that God doesn’t want you to eat.

‘It makes me feel like a ninja.’ Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

With sacrilegious ingenuity, this gadget says: enjoy your squash. The blade is tipped to penetrate the skin, and serrated to saw through the flesh. Once you’re in, the scoop lets you dig around and dispose of seeds in a single motion. It does what it says on the tin; which makes it more confusing that the tin is shaped exactly like a street weapon. The design nests the blade inside the translucent spoon, like a dagger in a scabbard. Why are all kitchen gadgets moulded on sex toys or street weapons? This one is almost both, which is a strange Venn diagram.

The plastic is a horrendous shade of sickly green, and the housing is loose – I’d have preferred it to click into place rather than rattling around. But it makes me feel like a ninja. I could infiltrate the kitchens of my enemies in the night, and er … helpfully split and cube their squash. Because it really is very good at that. In fact, like a latter-day sibling to the Ninja Turtles of my youth, it’s a hero in a half shell.

Redeeming features?

Doubles as a melon baller. (A melon baller is a cantaloupe that drives around in a convertible, with a gaggle of clementines and sharon fruits in the back seat.)

Counter, drawer, back of the cupboard?

Drawer your weapon, and damn your eyes. 3/5