Alright so today’s post is totally for amusement and entertainment purposes. Except for a pretty narrow use case, I don’t really see a connection with arts and cultural organizations.

I saw an article on Fast Company that reported Nintendo’s coating of Switch cartridges to prevent people from licking them is a great design choice.

Now as someone who grew up having to blow into video game cartridges to get them to work correctly my first thought was that maybe people were licking them to improve the conductivity of the contact points in order to make them work better or improve performance.

The real answer is that they are spraying a bitter tasting substance on to dissuade kids from putting the small cartridges which they may choke on into their mouths. They use a non-toxic but really bitter substance called denatonium benzoate. One milligram of the stuff in a liter of water can apparently make it inedible.

As I mentioned, the only use case I could see in the arts realm is if you run a theater or museum focused on young children and don’t want them mouthing fixtures, displays, toys and props. Honestly, there probably is a good case to be made to use the substance to maintain basic sanitary conditions in those situations.

Though while the author wishes they could buy it in Walmart, I have a suspicion that Nintendo uses a process that keeps the substance from transferring to your hands from the cartridges. Spraying it on at home or in a museum may have undesired side effects.