The Computer Wore Menace Shoes

Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kobt discuss the wine koozie on the "Today" show.

Kathie Lee Gifford celebrated a spectacular new invention on the “Today” show: the wine koozie. She and Hoda Kobt marveled at the neoprene sleeve that insulates your wine glass, keeping your preferred inebriant cool. Uh, Kathie, that’s hardly a new idea.

Sleeves of styrofoam large enough to hold a 12-ounce can have been around early 1980s. As technology has advanced, so have koozies. Since their humble beginnings, they have been made of flexible plastic, polyurethane, and, most recently, foam and neoprene, and koozies are now available to fit everything from energy drinks’ slim cans to wine bottles. They can even be personalized. (Alcoholics’ wedding favor, anyone?)

For Gifford, however, these discoveries can’t hold a candle to the cleverly named – hold on to your hats – Woozie! No matter that it probably wasn’t the first – it’s got a better name and design – or the best – dangling strings are just asking to be caught, yanking the glass from an upright position – because it’s got the better name.

Thankfully, being a simple sleeve of insulating material, there wasn’t too much that could be said about the Woozie before the hosts became completely inane talking about it. Right?

“Well, it keeps it cold,” said Kobt of the Woozie’s many wine glass-related functions, “And that’s so it doesn’t sweat. Whatever that means.”

Coincidentally, the product’s name perfectly describes how I feel whenever Gifford and Kobt are on TV.