A YouTube video he chanced across about a year ago inspired a Nansemond-Suffolk Academy graduate to design “a Goose that lays golden eggs.”

Geraint Krumpe, now the principal designer at Y Line Product Design in Chicago, said the video featured people using various methods to create an in-shell scrambled egg — a culinary delight known as the golden egg.

“People were scrambling eggs inside nylons, T-shirt sleeves or socks,” said the 37-year-old Krumpe, who grew up in Chuckatuck before heading to Colorado to seek his fortune in the summer after his junior year at college, arriving to his product-designer vocation via a circuitous route.

“I never intended to do the Goose, but I thought … ‘There’s got to be an easier way.’ So I got to it, and I broke every egg in my kitchen until 4 a.m., then went to work frustrated.”

But when Krumpe was reminded of a Victorian-era toy that rotates back and forth, reinvigorated, he unthreaded the laces from his tennis shoes and attached them to a plastic jar, creating the first Goose prototype.

After a months-long design process, the Goose in its current form was created. The hinged main shell securely cradles a raw egg, which is whisked into golden goodness when two handles, each attached to the capsule with string, are pulled in opposite directions after the capsule has been swung around to twist the strings.

The design is patent-pending, Krumpe said, adding, “There are people out there probably still trying to do it in a shirt sleeve.”
Right now, Krumpe says, he’s focused on raising $34,500 on kickstarter.com. The running total was approaching $5,000 on Tuesday, and the funding campaign ends May 15.

Project supporters via the website receive various awards, based on their level of support. Pledges of $18 or more — though numbers are limited — receive a Goose from the first production run, plus more besides.

Krumpe said the $34,500 would fund manufacturing and shipping the rewards, and what happens afterward “is probably still up in the air,” but could involve licensing the design to a larger manufacturer.

“I use it myself,” Krumpe said of the Goose, adding that being a vegetarian who still eats eggs and dairy products, it’s essentially to his protein delivery.

“Eggs is usually it,” he said of his protein source, “and it’s important to find new ways to cook eggs.”