Odds & Trends

Eggs on Edge. A good egg, concluded a former knitwear manufacturer in Miami, is a square egg. At least when it is hard-boiled and prone in its natural shape to roll across a plate. Thus Stan Pargman set up the Square Egg Co. to make a clear acrylic contraption that encases a cooked, peeled egg and, after ten minutes in a refrigerator, releases it reshaped. Is the world ready for it? Apparently Los Angeles is. When 1,000 of the gadgets went on sale in May Co. department stores there last month, they were snapped up in one day. A reorder of 5,000 went almost as quickly. The buyers did not seem to care that they could immobilize wandering egg-shaped eggs simply by cutting them in half --and still get a square meal.

Making Merry. With vodka having overtaken bourbon as the nation's best-selling liquor, the U.S. distributors of the famed Angostura bitters have marketed their first new product in 150 years: the Angostura Bloody Merry-Maker. Unlike the other Bloody Mary mixes that have long been available, Angostura's version is all additives, leaving the bartender to provide his own tomato juice and vodka. The idea behind the bottled blend of Worcestershire sauce, natural lemon flavor, bitters and spices is to let drinkers mix their Bloody Marys to taste. Each eight-fluid-ounce bottle ($1.60) can be used for up to 50 drinks --fewer, of course, if some like it hot.

Baubles That Blink. Elizabeth Taylor's jewels sparkle. Lou Rawls' pendant and Joe Frazier's sweater pins merely blink. The singer and former heavyweight boxing champion are early addicts of a new kind of costume jewelry that is fitted with special electronic circuits and powered by a hearing-aid battery. A small Phoenix company, H.A. Register, Inc., introduced the baubles last July, and has sold some 26,000 (retail price: $15). The blinking red lights are embedded in small, gold-colored trinkets, variously designed as traffic lights, question marks and Santa Claus, among other things. They can augment conversation. When a patron at the Phoenix Playboy Club asked a Bunny why the red light on her traffic-signal pendant, suspended above an intersection, was blinking, she sweetly responded: "Red means stop. Proceed with caution."

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