Frills Follow Function In New Marketing Tools

Everywhere you look these days, the functional is getting a coat of froufrou. Let's call it cutility. Keys, hammers, door knockers, even Swiss Army knives are no longer dull, straightforward, undecorated things. They are gussied up with polka dots, flowers or Disney characters to reflect the owner's personality and to make the mundane fun.

Everyday tools and objects are receiving total makeovers. Orvis sells a tool kit that includes flower-patterned pliers, scissors and utility knife. Target offers a toilet brush holder shaped like a black bear. At Strosniders in Bethesda, you can find lots of cutilitarian items. On the sidewalk out front, you are greeted by a pink Traeger barbecue grill in the shape of a pig.

Inside the hardware store -- for eons a refuge from cuteness -- you now see screwdrivers covered with stylized American flags, pink- and purple-flowered hammers, and racks of colorful designer house keys -- happy ones with smiley faces, daisy displays and multicolored jigsaw puzzle pieces. For about $5 you can buy Disney keys touting Mickey Mouse, the Little Mermaid and other characters. There are keys representing the Redskins, Wizards, Nationals, Orioles and Terps, among other teams. There are Superman, Spider-Man and SpongeBob SquarePants keys. And for your motorboat: a NASCAR key.

Personalized keys are explosively popular, says hardware and tool manager Jim Lovaas. "We're expanding all the time."

One company at the center of cutility is the Brooklyn-based Sarut Group. The firm distributes practical items with fanciful designs, such as cheese graters shaped like princesses in long skirts, vegetable peelers that are Asian characters and "Nemo whisks" shaped like fish. "Everything we do is very functional. But it brings an element of whimsy into the home," says company spokeswoman Sharon Hitchcock. "We take ordinary objects and make you smile."

In this same-old, same-old world, she says, "it's an attempt to make your home an oasis."

Alan Andreasen, a marketing guru at Georgetown University, says the trend toward cutility is "an attempt by lots of people to individualize both themselves and their possessions."

He equates the cuting-up of the commonplace with "tattoos, customized cellphones and ringtones as a way to step away from mass commoditization."

Credit, he says, goes to the clever marketers who have found ways to breathe life into mundane commodity categories. "Sure," he says, some "people have lots more discretionary money to spend on these things, but I think it's more about the idea of trying to be your own person."

Cutilitarian Karen Matthias had such a desire for attractively designed tools that she and her husband, David, started Ladies Tools Online in 2005. "The biggest thing we hear," David Matthias says by phone from Worthington, Ohio, "is 'I want a tool set my husband won't touch.' "

So the Matthiases offer a peaches-and-cream-colored tool set and several pink versions.

"The girls want to use their own screwdrivers," David Matthias says. "Cutsey is good, but they want good quality, too."

Even toilet paper has become psychedelic and sassy.

A New Jersey company, Just Toilet Paper, has taken one of the most basic of products and run wild. At about $8 each, its toilet tissue rolls are decorated with hearts, kissing lips, angels, shamrocks, ducks, roses, balloons, polar bears -- almost anything you can think of to reflect personalities and perpetuate popcult memes.

There is a tradition of making the ordinary ornate. For centuries, fisherfolk carved scrimshaw scenes on the bone handles of knives and other utensils, such as bells, umbrellas and pie crimpers. For decades, there have been cartoon-character night lights, kitschy lamps and variously colored Princess phones.

Cutility, however, is spreading preciousness, syruplike, over the last remaining standard-issue items. Even classic Swiss army knives are marketed in pink, purple and blue with an ornate edelweiss design on the side. So where is all this going, this pursuit of sappiness? Can daisy-adorned Leatherman tools, Crayola-colored tenpenny nails and Burberry jackhammers be far behind?