Kickstarter, the popular crowdfunding platform, provides us with a sheer endless stream of new products. Some of them are more useful than others, some truly fill niches that needed to be filled, and some make you wonder what their creators were thinking. And then there are those projects that seem incredibly quirky at first, but turn out to be pretty useful.
The Heirloom is just such a product. It’s basically a huge, red, plushy tomato with a tripod mount sticking out of its top. It will stabilize your camera on surfaces where a tripod or other means of stabilization won’t work, and hence its creator aptly describes it with the words, “Sometimes freedom comes in the form of a big red tomato.”
The Heirloom camera stand is made out of water resistant Cordura that can be filled with many different things – its creator prefers to fill it with navy beans, but you’re of course not limited to that. When mounting a camera or smartphone (via a tripod adapter for smartphones) to the Heirloom, its creator promises that it’ll help position your camera on surfaces where you can’t set up a tripod, and that it offers more protection than using, for example, a beanie bag because the camera is attached to it via the tripod mount.
Related: Get a handle on your smartphone camera with the Shoulderpod S1 grip accessory
The campaign has a rather optimistic financing goal of $43,000, of which so far roughly $6,500 have been raised. With more than two weeks to go, you can support the project by pledging as little as $1. For a pledge of $30, you can be one of the first to receive a final Heirloom tomato camera stand in either red or the limited yellow edition. The regular price of the Heirloom will be $40 for just the bag, and $50 for the tomato in addition to a filling of beans.
Fore more information on the Heirloom camera stand, please visit the project’s Kickstarter page. Oh, and in case you were wondering about its strange name: it’s named after a variety of tomato that it resembles.