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..... is marketing it like a tech innovation
As part of a marketing push for burger chain McDonald's new Chocolate Shamrock Shake, a team of robotic and aerospace engineers have redesigned the humble drinking straw.
The new shake is a layered fifty-fifty combination of McDonald's standard chocolate milkshake with the minty seasonal favourite on top. The engineers and designers worked for months on this project, which resulted in a hooked, plastic straw with four holes, including one at the bottom.
The redesigned limited edition STRAW -- short for "Suction Tube for Reverse Axial Withdrawal," as shown in a funny film by McDonald's, is meant to alleviate the most basic of problems: having to wait for your shake to melt a bit before you can get the perfect mix of chocolate and mint flavors. While a conventional straw will only slurp up one part of the shake at a time, engineers have worked on a snorkel design and side openings to suck in both layers at once.