This KFC tray cover doubles as a wireless keyboard

The future isn't as exciting as we thought it would be. Useful, sure, but it's not all flying cars and holograms.

Take KFC's new idea for upgrading that paper tray liner. Rather than simply collecting the grease and ketchup residue from your bucket of fried goodness, the 'Tray Typer' becomes altogether more useful with the additional functionality of a wireless keyboard. 

Squeezed into the 0.4mm paper sleeve is a Bluetooth unit, a full QWERTY keyboard, and a rechargeable USB battery. Rather than plastering their smartphone touchscreens in chicken juice, the paper keyboard allows customers to connect up to their mobile and extol the joy of their fingerlickin' meal - transferring grease onto the easily-cleaned 'Tray Typer'.

A PR novelty rather than a permanent new store feature, Tray Typers were handed out at the opening weekends of various new KFC stores in a bid to nudge customers toward social media. We can't imagine the electronic components will ever be cheap enough to see KFC incorporate keyboards into their trays in the near future, but it's a novel illustration of just how far technologies like Bluetooth have come.

We would joke about auto-tweeting beverage cups and iris scanning burger boxes, but on the basis of this, they could be a thing by the end of the decade.

[Via: Design Taxi]