It’s easy to hate on delivery services like UPS, FedEx, and the United States Postal Service. After all, the only time anyone ever really thinks about their existence is when they do something wrong, like lose a package or deliver a busted box to your front door, right? Well even if you’re willing to look the other way on late deliveries or horrible tracking updates, the USPS is launching a product that will make you scratch your head so hard you might end up needing stitches. It’s a tree ornament that, for some reason, tells you when a package gets delivered.
USPS calls it “The Most Wonderful Ornament,” but it’s clear why. It’s a classic sphere-shaped ornament that you hang on your tree, but instead of just sitting there looking pretty, it displays delivery notifications via three different colored icons. There’s alerts for when something is shipped, delivered, and opened by the recipient (thanks to a little sensor you have to put in the package itself).
It is, in short, a glorified tracking text alert that you’d normally get on your phone, only now you have to be in front of your Christmas tree in order to actually get the message. But don’t worry, if you’re not at home you can go to the special website that the USPS set up, enter your ornament ID, and the package tracking number to see if your ornament at home is displaying any alerts. Or — and this is really just me spitballing here — maybe you could just check the tracking number by itself and get the exact same information. Hey, I’m not a scientist, but it seems pretty straightforward.
Oh, and this funky high-tech ornament isn’t wireless, so you have to actually have it plugged in to an outlet of some type in order for it to work, which will definitely look great on your tree.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), Engadget reports that the USPS isn’t ready to actually roll these beauties out to everyone just yet, and is only doing a closed trial of them this time around. If for some reason you want to get your hands on one, your best bet will be to hope that the USPS can convince itself to actually sell these to the public next year.
