Goldfish aren’t just the optimal shape for cheese-flavored crackers, but also for tea bags. According to Mental Floss, a group of students at St. Johns University in Taipei have created tea bags that swell up to look like a goldfish splashing around in your mug.
Now sold through a creative agency called Charm Villa, the bags are “composed of [a] Japanese fabric” that are filled with one of four varieties of local tea including rose oolong, jin yuan, ruby black, and something called “Oriental beauty.” When the tea bag is placed in hot water, the body of it absorbs water and transforms into a fish-like shape. The thread attached to to the mouth “can be tugged to make it appear as if it’s swimming,” too.
(Photo: Charm Villa/Facebook)
While the bags have been popular in Taipei for a few years now, they have just recently become available to Americans (via Amazon). However, the cute bags don’t run cheap: A box of 12 will cost a tea enthusiast $80 or $6.66 per bag—which is way more than the price of an actual goldfish.
As far as tea innovations go, the goldfish bags are right up there with the Hälssen & Lyon Tea Calendar. The pages of the calendar are made with compressed tea leaves and each day can be torn off and placed in boiling water to brew a single serving of tea. Buy yourself both this holiday seasons, because in the words of Tom Haverford, you should “treat yo self.”
[via Mental Floss]