Talk:Wonderbag

Novelty of Wonderbag and prior art?

How novel is the Wonderbag, within South African culture?

I've only been there once, in 2007 (great trip, marvellous country, lovely people). We stayed with family near Durban and one memory is that any long road trip (and in SA, there's no other sort) would involve teams of the sainted Aunties working in the kitchen the night before to make vast bathtub-sized pans of curry. Each pan would then be wrapped in a drawstring bag "curry duvet", often sewn from an old duvet, and placed in the boot of the cars. Some hours later, we'd stop for lunch - served hot from these vast curry pans. Now these were more for transportation than for energy saving cookery, but they were a fairly common device - we saw other travellers with them too. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:57, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I doubt it's "novel" in the sense of hitherto-unknown at all, given that the device was (per sources) directly modelled on the sort of thing you've seen yourself. The novelty seems to be in using the device not simply to keep cooked food warm but as a direct replacement for a significant portion of the direct heating time, along with using a more sophisticated manufacturing method. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:25, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

If you've never seen one or heard of the idea, it would likely be novel to you. For people who spend hours hunting for scraps of wood to feed a fire, it's a miracle. On aspect that is revolutionary is this is the one low tech cooking help that meets the need of the end consumer. Apparently there has been many efforts to ease cooking requirements, but they didn't work for the end users. Sportfan5000 (talk) 07:38, 6 January 2014 (UTC)