We all know that Germans eat 1.7 times faster than we do, but it sometimes remains a mystery to us just how these skills are acquired. It turns out that the ability to eat in a super-efficient manner, much like the ability to say vowels with dots over them, is developed in early childhood.
To train their kids to be ready for 30 minute lunch breaks as working adults, German parents give their children a little fork and a thing they call a food-shover. The food-shover looks like a little tiny garden hoe and teaches their toddlers, that the main purpose of a knife is not to cut food into bits, but rather to rake it onto your fork.
deutsche Übersetzung für Astrid ein/ausblenden
Einen schönen guten Abend Astrid,hier die Übersetzung:
Wie die Deutschen lernen, 1,7 mal schneller zu essen als Amerikaner
Wir alle wissen, dass Deutsche 1,7 mal schneller essen als wir, aber manchmal bleibt es ein Geheimnis für uns, wie diese Fähigkeiten erlangt wurden. Es hat sich herausgestellt, dass die Fähigkeit, auf sehr effiziente Art und Weise zu essen, genauso wie die Fähigkeit, Vokale mit Pünktchen drüber auszusprechen, in frühester Kindheit entwickelt wird.
Um ihre Kinder auf eine 30-minütige Mittagspause in ihrem Leben als arbeitende Erwachsene vorzubereiten, geben deutsche Eltern ihren Kindern eine kleine Gabel und etwas, dass sie einen Essenschieber nennen. Der Essenschieber sieht aus wie eine winzig kleine Gartenhacke und bringt ihren Kleinkindern bei, dass der hauptsächliche Nutzen eines Messers nicht ist, das Essen in Stückchen zu schneiden, sondern vielmehr, es auf die Gabel zu schieben.
Viel Spaß im Urlaub!
John
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September 14th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I’ve never seen this thing before…
September 14th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
What IS this thing ? A “food-shover” ? Never heard of it, never saw such a thing in my life
September 14th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Oh no, how will my kid keep up with her peers? We forgot to get one for her!
September 14th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
never seen that either. I think it’s one of these things people believe to need these days, forgetting that they managed pretty well without when they were small.
September 14th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I had a set just like this when I was little…about 26 years ago. I just loved to use it, even when I was able to use a fork and knife later…
September 14th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Never seen or heard of anything similiar… Knife and fork and discipline (”Use your knife AND your fork!!!”)
September 14th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
WTF! Never seen before. Hm… and I am German, and 34 years old.
September 14th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Never saw one of these things. But it might be a promising approach for getting foreigners in Germany up to speed
September 14th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Same here, heard of such a thing for the first time in my life. Maybe it’s some regional thing?
Bettina, where are you from?
September 14th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
hmmmm, you really think it´s regional?
I´m from Lower Saxony, does that mean that people from Northern Germany learn to shovel food and the ones from the South learn to cut it?
September 14th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Well this is exotic, even for Germans. I haven’t seen this before, but I remember these little creatures on the knife and the “food-raker”… probably every German kid has eaten with a fork from this brand (but I don’t know the name..).
September 14th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Same here ..never seen this thing!
September 14th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
I used to have one of those when I was little as did my younger sister. But we both ditched them really fast: Our parents used knifes, so naturally we wanted to use them, too.
Since some commentors were suspecting the Schaber to be a regional thing: I grew up in Lower Saxony, somewhere between Oldenburg and East Frisia. We used them around 1980.
September 14th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Probably northern germans have this, because they don’t need knives for their fish.
Here in southern germany I’ve never seen this.
September 14th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Bettina,
as I am from Lower Saxony as well and have never seen this before, I don’t think it’s regional
September 14th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
I indeed remember that I used to have such a thing when I was a child. I doubt this to be a regional habit. The translation “shover” is not bad, we called it “Kinderschieber”. In the age of 6, when we proudly started going to school, the Schieber was replaced with the knife.
I think this is a family related thing. One family has it (and so do their descendants), the other doesn’t. And it might work out that it isn’t German at all ;-), one American family has it, the other…. you get the idea
September 14th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Never seen something like this. I am 30 years old.
September 14th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Hmmm…. Remembering my time as a german soldier I’ve learned to accept lunch as a useless luxus. Once we had a 5 minute break, since then I’m a friend of nutritive solution. I’m also almost tired of spending time every second or third day, to move in a market and think about the fact, what I may want to eat the next meals and to keep it in the borders of my available money.
September 14th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Oh man, i want one!
September 14th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
that’s an amisteck, we always kept a few handy in case we had americans for dinner, so we could get something else done and not waste all that precious time at the dinner-table as our glacial transatlantic guests are prone to do.
September 14th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I still have mine! In a nice red box together with his friends spoon, fork AND knive… got some nice fairytales relief on the handles and is probably silver or silverplated… but i’m austrian, how does this fit into the general picture of this phenomenon? (OK, my grandma is german and her cooking makes a good reason for eating fast
)
September 14th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Same here, never seen it.
September 14th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I’ve never seen that thing before but I had a knife/fork/spoon set from the same company (noticing the handle decorations).
I learned to use a knife and fork properly and not “shove” it around my plate.
September 14th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
I’m also from Lower Saxony and have never seen anything like this before. I might have to ask my mother or grandmother…
September 14th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
In more than fourty years living in Germany, I see this thing for the very first time!
Are you sure it is german?
September 14th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Didn’t ever see a device like this - although I recognize the decorations.
September 14th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Ok, all you naysayers.. just type in “kinderbesteck” into google images.
http://images.google.de/images?gbv=2&hl=de&q=kinderbesteck&btnG=Bilder-Suche
September 14th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
I have also never seen this before. We do have “Kinderbesteck”, but it does not include this thing that looks like something from a casino, but a non-sharp knife.
September 14th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
>> just type in “kinderbesteck” into google images.
And what do we find? 1 out of 21 pictures shows that weird thing that you call German tradition.
Your blog mainly contains dumb crap. But then again… No one outside Germany reads it so you’re basically telling crap to people who know better. Well done.
September 14th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
What in the name of Bismarck’s Pickelhaube IS THIS THING????????? Is it for collecting together evasive food like peas?? Looks like a razor! Anyway I have never seen this odd contraption before in my life!
September 14th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
It is astonishing to me ( 46 years old, German, now living in the US) how many Germans do not know the “Schieber”. I had one as well, as did my siblings. I just asked my husband (German as well) and he had never seen it, even though we had very comparable experiences growing up. So it seems to me that some families used them and others did not. I also did have a child size fork, knife and spoon. The rationale behind the ‘Schieber” is simply this: you start out with spoon and “Schieber” as your first silverware when you do not have the motor skills yet to use a spoon and fork properly. Once you get accomplished with the “Schieber” you get to “graduate” to the fork. It worked for my daughter as well and while other small children were still eating with their fingers she already could use silverware and felt all grown up. I’ve always thought it to be a pretty clever idea.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:10 am
“It is astonishing to me (46 years old, German, now living in the US) how many Germans do not know the “Schieber”. I had one as well, as did my siblings.”
Dude, those “weapons” were not allowed down here in the American part of West-Berlin ;-). But seriously, we all grew up with regular forks and knives. And I don’t know anyone who knows a “Schieber”. Actually, the first time I read about a “Schieber” was, hmm, just right now… lol.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:13 am
I know that! But we never had something like that at home.
I have seen that, when I searched a “Kinderbesteck” for my niece and my nephew and I found that absolutely useless….
Wendy
September 15th, 2008 at 8:22 am
This seems to be a cultural thing. I grew up in an upper middle class, intellectual family and of course I had a “Schieber” as a kid. One generation later, my sisters kids have/had it too. In fact I had one in stainless steel for ordinary days and one silver plated for Sundays, when the whole table was decorated and the good china was used.
Place: Southern Germany - but the family’s origin is Hamburg and Thuringia
Timeframe: Early 70’s
September 15th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Is it real? o_O”
strange thing.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:05 am
I’m 41, from Southern Westphalia, and yes, I had one. It was a popular “Taufgeschenk”. So, yes, in the late 60s, early 70s these things were still going. I’m proud to say that I am now a skilled user of knife and fork.
Melanie
September 15th, 2008 at 9:29 am
I had a “Schieber” it was part of the Kinderbesteck my family handed down since the late 19th century (it is said to be from the first silverware of my grand-grandfather).
When I remember correctly it was used as a substitute for the knife as it was considered to dangerous to give a real knife to a two year old (all the knifes of our silverware tended to really cut your food)
September 15th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Well, i’m 53 and i never saw a device like that until today, too. My first thought was, that John was kidding us by showing a photo composition. Searching pictures with ”Live Search” (i avoid Google on principle) for ”Kinderbesteck” brought just one picture (out of hundreds!) showing this curiosity. And the website, where it has been found, called it antiquarian. For me, that’s at least a circumstantial evidence, not to belong to the antiquities myself, which is, after all, a favorable advice! ;o)
September 15th, 2008 at 10:35 am
“German parents give their children ()… and a thing they call a food-shover.”
I reckon such a headline could easily make it on British or US news.
Brilliant. This is the perfect way to create an urban legend…
Never heard of it before. But I’d love to have one. Where did you find that, John?
September 15th, 2008 at 10:38 am
I had one of those when I was little and I’m only 29 now.
Haven’t seen many of those since then though.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Get the last one here: http://www.amazon.de/Rosendahl-Kinderbesteck/dp/B000NON9ZQ
September 15th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Well, looks like a customized tortenschieber.
What’s that white stuff anyway? Coke?
September 15th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Thank you , John, for bringing back childhood memories. My sister and me had these Schiebers when we were toddlers in the 60’s. I am surprised too how many folks say they haven’t seen such a tool before. It was very common among our friends and relatives.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Sorry you misunderstood something. The trick about our lunchbreakes is different.
In these 30 minutes we concentrate on eating.
And we talk while we get payed for work. So we don’t have to mix up eating and talking, that’s what saves us a lot of time =D
September 15th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Vowels with dots, hahahaha^^
September 15th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
What the hell is this? I’ve never seen such a thing before.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Sweet but I never saw such a thing in my life and I grew up in Germany
September 16th, 2008 at 7:35 am
ive also never seen somthing like that but it kinda looks funny.
btw: it’d be awesome if you’d post more often, im getting bored at work and your site is so rarely updatet lately :/
September 16th, 2008 at 8:45 am
My father had one of these when he was a young boy in Danzig in the 1930’s. From the looks of the set, this might well precede him by at least one generation. My brother and I were also using the Schieber and spoon first but we later graduated to use knife and fork.
I really have the impression that this whole Schieber business is a family thing, though. Nobody in our neighborhood seems to know the Schieber… and that is my observation here in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany, right at the coast of the Baltic Sea.
Cheers
September 16th, 2008 at 9:39 am
33y, northern german (real, I mean: real, not from south of the Elbe river like all the bavarians here..) and: Never seen such thing.
But! I had a Nutella-Knife! Looking at the hands of my kids these days I should ask my parents to send it over.
September 16th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Is this made up? I’m German and I’ve never seen such a thing.
September 16th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Luke Says: Your blog mainly contains dumb crap. But then again… No one outside Germany reads it so you’re basically telling crap to people who know better. Well done.
You obviously thrive on dumb crap.
Reminds me of a Mistkaefer who can’t help but to come back to the Misthaufen.only one significant difference between you and the bug… The mistkaefer has a purpose.
Mixxy
September 16th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Asked my German friends, none of them had ever seen such a thing before. Many of them are typical lawschool fodder (i.e. upper middle class), they’re from all over Germany even though we all live in Hamburg now, and a lot of them have different family backgrounds and traditions.
They seem to have grown up using smaller, dull knives and forks (as did I, maybe that’s an East Coast thing? - Sorry, could not resist poking fun!) but no money-raking equipment.
Looks useful, though. Maybe I should look into acquiring one so I can keep up with my German friends eating lunch?
September 17th, 2008 at 5:43 am
Funny thing, but I have never seen it before. But I think, if I would have had such a Schieber in my childhood, I would have played “Casino” with my little brother at lunch, playing for the peas.
“OK, I am going all in…”
September 17th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Luke - no need to attack John… why are you reading this (and leaving comments) when it’s “dumb crap”? Obviously he’s got you interested LOL btw - my american wife and my German self think he’s pretty hilarious (and pretty much correct most of the time)
September 17th, 2008 at 10:06 am
My family used to call this a “Schieberchen” (note the diminutive) and it was a common threat around the family table. “If you won’t use your knife AND fork, mum will buy you a Schieberchen, so that all your friends will laugh”.
Gosh, they surely would have had.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
i had one - and i am only 25. i think i did “inherit” it from an aunt, though.
September 17th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Thank you nothingforungood.com! Now I know we have these things in germany I will most certainly get one for my kids. If I will ever have any, at least.
September 18th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I also had one - i’m 48. Grown up in east-westphalia.
Was a part of every decent “Besteck”. If your parents didn’t had one, this means they stole their forks, knives and spoons in the employer’s canteen.
September 18th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
i had it when i was younger and so did my sister.im 22, from the palatinate region and it had “pumuckl” on it!
September 18th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I even had two of those as a child. Still have them somewhere but didn´t pass them on to my daughter because noone I know uses them and I wanted her to learn properly with fork and knife at a young age.
I´m 28 years old and from Franconia.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
I’m 46, was born Bremen and grew up in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), never saw one of those in my life! Had the “Kinderbesteck” though.
September 19th, 2008 at 12:51 am
It almost cracked me up when I read all those previous posts about the Schieber! I never had one, I learned at a certain age how to properly cut food and behave at the dinner table unlike most americans who way into their adult age, eat with their fingers, hold the fork, shove the food with the fingers on it or cut pieces off, even in restaurants, so it makes me gag while sitting at the next table. However, if I wou;f have had one when I was little, it would have made my mother furious, wasting time chasing the food on the plate…But I am sure, this Schieber would make an american kid’s day, as they need “fun” and “entertainment” with the food at the dinner table…
September 19th, 2008 at 10:56 am
@ BigSis MizMinka: We are too old! This came up after our spinach-trials. And your nephew never had on of these either… Just benefits the companies like Soling… etc.
September 20th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
September 20th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
p.s as a kid, my grandmother always told me to use my bread not my fingers.
September 21st, 2008 at 6:20 am
They’re still being sold, see here for example:
http://www.wmf.de/produkte.asp?nv_id=256&se_id=29&sp_id=1&va_id=0&sid={389DEE92-6D7B-4526-A31B-06D771E7BBE0}
And just a few years ago I bought a few without any decorations on them because ours was always in the dishwasher. So they’re definitely still being produced. And sold. And bought
September 21st, 2008 at 10:23 pm
It gets kinda old. Your initial “columns” were quite insightful; but now it’s just grasping for straws.
Better lay off of it. /M
September 27th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Never seen something like this and I am 20 years old.
October 5th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Hi,
I’m german and I’ve never seen this for the purpose that is described. I know that there was this set from an american (!) seller as a joke, but nobody uses that in germany and nobody gives that to their kids. they learn to eat with fork and knife like everybody else. Yes germans use the knife not only for cutting, but to shovel food on the fork, and when kids see their parents doing that, they copy it.
October 6th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Wow, this tool is remarkably unhelpful.^^ Guess, a knife would be a lot more pragmatical for learning the food shoveling. Besides I’ve never seen anything like this before.
Anyways, nice blog.
gtx
October 12th, 2008 at 9:46 am
That’s for sure not a typical german thing. Some people here said, it might only be common in Northern Germany, but not even that. I live in Northern Germany (Schleswig-Holstein) and have never seen or used this in the past 30 years.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Never seen such a thing either …. what’s up Walzer?
October 15th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
I´m from Hamburg and I´ve seen these things in my childhood. Might have had one myself. For sure my younger brothers and sisters “learned” eating with them.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Hallo,
so’n Teil gibts hier nicht. 4 Wochen sind seit dem Eintrag rum - Wann geht es hier weiter ?
Gruß, Rolle
October 20th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I have never seen such a thing either, and took it to be tongue-in-cheek. As an Austrian translator living in the U.S. (Las Vegas), I have actually observed (in my completely unscientific studies), that Americans tend to eat faster than my folks back home, and have some crazier eating habits. Sonic? Eating in your car? Why? However, it’s interesting to observe the differences between my cultures, and I am delighted to make fun of both (all three, actually, as I grew up in Mexico City).
Great blog; adding it to my blog roll and RSS feed. Ah, and “I can English”. We have an Uebersetzungsfehler Blog which you might enjoy: http://www.uebersetzungsfehler.com/. Alles Liebe aus Vegas, und ich hab’ gut gelacht, danke!
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Oh my good, what happens to German Tischkultur? I’ve been proud to teach my future children to eat anständig with both hands on the table (instead of one arm resting on your lab under the table like their daddy does). What’ll I do now? Finger food only?
PS: Excellent blog, funny, smart, entertaining!
October 26th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
I am German and you are writing plain [bullcrap] here. I have never ever seen such device in Germany.
You may not only mention that we may eat 1.7x faster (from where have you got this “fact”)? You could have mentioned that Americans invented “fast food” and that Americans eat 10x more.
Proof: http://penixproject.com/blog/Pictures/obese_american.jpg
I dont know the intention of your blog but i just read two postings and am pretty much disappointed so far.
If you grew up in your own country you are blind for stupid things going on in your country. So, there are many things which you as a foreigner could observe in Germany which would make also us laugh in a positive way.
But unproven false bashing is not even amusing. It is just sad and I ask myself for your motivation for representing this utterly false picture.
I wouldn’t even care but I expected funnier observations of an American in Germany.
A German
Editor’s Note: Welcome to my site, you are welcome to post nasty things about me, but please keep the language clean. Thanks, John.
October 27th, 2008 at 6:17 am
@Editor: Thank you for your reply. Why not backup your postings with actual proof? Where have you seen this kind of devices? Or perhaps I made myself a complete moron by not seeing any intention of being ironic or exaggerating (if any).
Your presentation of the ridiculous Sanifair system is much more entertaining than that. And fully true, it is a stupid system.
Or, start talking about German tax system and you easily beat any comdian.
Another suggestion: Talk about the German “Schwarzbuch” published by the lobby of tax payers, This a list of stupid public projects which waste enormous amounts of tax money for nothing but idiotic things.
A public pee facility for $600,000?! No problem for a retarded city community.
The Schwarzbuch is such a rich display of maximum stupidity you can’t imagine. German “Beamte” are not paid for intelligence or cleverness in any way but solely for their time spending in the office. Almost completely independing what they are actually doing or how much of not their money they are wasting. They can’t be fired by law, even not for most miserable failures. You will find stories which can be very “entertaining” (unless you actually have to pay for other’s stupidity). You could probably even start a TV show.
http://schwarzbuch08.steuerzahler.de/flash.php
Or connect with a German tax adviser who can tell you a lot of jokes about crazy tax laws.
A German
P.S.: I would love to hear a foreigner’s point of view about the humour of Loriot (an infamous and ingenious German humorist. Quite the opposite of the American slapstick).
October 27th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Ohhhh, how wonderful! I definetly had one, it was called “Schieberchen und Löffelchen” (-chen of course!). That was 30 years ago, in Hesse at the time. It is used way before you are able to grab the knife…
Unfortunately you hardly find them these days, but they are surely not regional….
October 28th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
@German: Please turn on your sarcasm detector.
@Editor: Please remember to write an article about us Germans always demanding proof for everything. Maybe you can come up with something funny.
I’ve never seen that “device” either, but I’d like to have one
October 31st, 2008 at 7:45 am
Well i have to say that i never had one of those “Schieber”/”Food-Shover” either. And I Never saw one of those things everywhere i’ve been in the whole state of germany.
I started using a kind of safer knife produced for kids at the age of 3 or 4 years. It’s definitly not as sharp as a normal knife
November 3rd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I am German, and me and my two brothers had at least 3 of these sets in our home. When I got upset at my brothers in later years, I would put them next to theirs plate when setting the table…
Great blog, by the way!
November 4th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Never seen this before and I’m not sure if my german boyfriend used this as a kid… but this explains his speed eating
November 10th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Holy moly! I have been complaining for *years* about my German husband’s speed eating! I thought it was a personal thing…now I see I may have been a little unfair–it’s a cultural thing.
Great blog, by the way. Don’t listen to those foul-mouthed, grumpy Germans. I fail to see how the German tax code is at all funny when looked at from an American perspective. But speed-eating? Yeah!
November 11th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Another bulletin from the Ministry Of Silly Walks.
Lovely.
Wuwei
November 11th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
You forgott the curved spoon, which belongs to this set.
Yes - I know this stuff!
Using fork AND knife is not for speed eating. When Americans have cut their whole meat, they have a big advantage while eating. Germans have to cut while chewing.
November 13th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Ich hatte einen solchen Schieber, aus Silber, zu meinem 1. Geburtstag bekommen. Einem amerikanischen Soldaten, der 1945 in unserem Haus einquartiert war, hat das Gerät so gut gefallen, dass er es mit nach Hause nahm, wohl um es seinen Kindern zu zeigen.
November 14th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I’m from from the southern part of germany and I know this “thing”
. My father passed it on to my sister and me. I really liked it as a child and used it to build large mountains of mashed potatoes.
So it really slowed me down while eating :))) .
December 15th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Food shover? You have GOT to be kidding me.
I have never in my life even heard of something like that. I would expect something like that from some whacky American inventor but not from a conservative traditionalist german mind.
I should know, I’m an American-German myself.
December 1st, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Yeah I remember that I had something like this when I was young xD
I’m from Rhineland-Palatinate; near Mainz.
December 3rd, 2010 at 6:07 pm
LOL! I’ve never seen that device before either, even though I’m German, but then, there are really quite a few interesting pieces of cutlery in high-brow eating culture.
Daniel: You know, there were quite a number of wacky German (and German-American) inventors in history too, and there still are, and same for conservative traditionalist American minds
December 4th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
OK, I forgot to mention that I’m from Bavaria and 32. I just asked my mum (who is 58, by the way) and it was total news to her, too. She noted that the obvious solution would be to simply give the little one a duller, child-safe knife instead. By the way, “Kinderschieber” is a funny term, because it is quite ambiguous, it can also refer to a criminal, a “child pusher”. The more I think of it, the more I get the vague feeling that I have actually seen or heard this kind of device before, but it could also be an illusion created by thinking and reading about it too much …
Anyway, I think it’s a brilliant invention and looks really cool. I want one!
Indeed, it looks like a miniature version of a Tortenschieber or the “money-raking” device that is used in gambling (I wonder if there is a name for it).
It’s really a mystery that quite a lot of people have used it themselves and still, others have never heard of it before. Could it be that many people who used it in their early childhood have simply forgotten about it or even repressed the memory?
Stefan and the others: Is the trademark that you and others are thinking of possibly WMF?
(On a totally unrelated subject, cool to see a Tristania fan here, Paul.)