Umbrellas reinvented with the NZ-made Blunt

We haven’t done the research, but given how much money we all spend on poorly made brollies, it’s likely that we’re burning through dollars on terribly temporary rain deterrents that end up broken and alone in the street. Wouldn’t it be nice to see an umbrella that won’t die? Well now there apparently is one.

Designed in New Zealand, the Blunt Umbrella is a new style of umbrella that goes beyond trying to make an umbrella that won’t break down on you when you really need it by providing blunt edges that won’t knock the eye out of that guy next to you.

We suspect that protective measure – making the pointy bits less pointy – is one of the lesser features, though, with a “radial tensioning system” making this umbrella harder to break and more weather resistant, the important part of what an umbrella has been made for.

An umbrella where the insides have been thought about.

To deal with all that wind, stress, and anger the clouds and heavens are trying to descend onto your head, Blunt’s logic is to use a better skeleton inside the umbrella that act like “fingers stretching into a glove,” eventually connecting with the blunt tips (those bits that won’t poke eyes out) that act as mini umbrellas to capture and balance air with tiny pockets.

It’s all a lot of neat engineering, and according to the people at Blunt, this makes the umbrella close to “non-destructible,” which, in a week like we currently have across Australia, is probably worth a test.

The Blunt umbrellas are available in lots of sizes, from small to regular to you-probably-need-a-golf-cart-to-carry-one-this-big, with prices ranging from $69 to $149.

One that has our attention is the Blunt Lite+, which is a regular full-sized umbrella throwing in the same nifty technology they all have, but including a “Bluntscreen” which apparently blocks 99% of UV light, as well as “e-Dry” coating, which is essentially a hydrophobic coating that stops water from absorbing and essentially bounces off the canopy, similar to what was used in the Motorola RAZR.

Given how many ten buck cheap and nasty umbrellas we’ve bought in the past year – or past two days, with all the rain in Sydney – maybe it’s about time we spent money on one that lasted more than ten minutes.

Now to find a way not to lose it on buses…

This is a $129 golf umbrella. You won't knock eyes out with this thanks to the blunt tips, but if you walk through the streets carrying one, just consider yourself a mobile rain shelter.