Solving a series of long-standing issues associated with taking out the typical fast food trifecta, this clever carrying case is a useful alternative to Happy Meal boxes, bags and cupholders that work better for cars than people traveling on foot or by bike.

The solution is more subtle than it might first appear – yes, it solves the timeless question of how to hold a drink as well as a meal, but it also separates out the warm foods (french fries and hamburger above) from the cool drink (soda or shake suspended below), then unfolds into a ready-to-eat spread. Thin cardboard makes the entire container easy to collapse as well.

Customers can hold the package in their hand or slip it over the handlebars and continue cycling unencumbered. Targeted initially toward markets in two bicycle-friendly cities (Copenhagen, Denmark and Medellin, Colombia), the company is also looking to give these a go in Amsterdam, Holland and Tokyo, Japan.

For now, it is a trial redesign that is as much about marketing toward young urban bikers, but if the packaging is sound there seems to be no obvious reason for McDonalds not to ultimately deploy these around the world (and for other fast food chains to follow suit).

They say great design is in the details, so what would happen if you were to twist a key element here or tweak a core feature there? As it turns out, rendering an item relatively frustrating (but still functional) is quite easy and at times fairly humorous as well.

In an ongoing series dubbed The Uncomfortable, Katerina Kamprani “decided to create and design for all the wrong reasons. The goal is to redesign useful objects making them uncomfortable but usable and maintain the semiotics of the original item. Vindictive and nasty? Or a helpful study of everyday objects?”

Much of her work deals with the most common items we use everyday, from tableware and cookware to keys and chairs, each recognizable but distorted, usable but difficult.

Adding hinges and chains to spoons, forks and knives readily defeats their purpose, as does bending the handle on a mug or adding a nose-bumping extrusion to a wine glass. While the works are conceptual renderings, some are for sale as art prints and many others could be 3D printed as gag gifts, too.

Like socks, or any other paired object of everyday use, it seems the eternal curse of chopsticks to become separated and mismatched over time, at least until now.

Japanese design firm Nendo, well known for classy solutions to classic design problems, turned their attention to the chopstick and came up with a pair of ingenious solutions.

One design, the Rassen, is strictly mechanical – the ends are carefully corkscrewed so they can intertwine with one another like tightly-interlocked strands of double-helical DNA.

The other design employs inconspicuous magnets that keep points and backs from sticking while helping them stay together (and appear part of a whole) when flipped and nestled.

Few everyday objects have remained so consistent in their shape and function for so long as the Chinese chopstick, but as these designs show: a few thousand years of history is no reason not to look at a product anew. Each of these easy-to-re-pair designs (as well as a few other clever variations) is set to go on sale soon via manufacturer Hashikura Matsukan.