fraud

An attention-grabbing Kickstarter campaign attempting to reinvent the measuring spoon has turned into a mad, mad, mad, mad world for backers after years of broken promises and thousands of missing spoons.

The mind-boggling design for the measuring spoon first wowed the Internet in 2016 after a video promoting the Kickstarter campaign went viral and spawned widespread media coverage fawning over the unique design.

Known as Polygons, the three-in-one origami measuring spoons have a flat design that can be easily folded into common teaspoon and tablespoon measurements. “Regular spoons are so 3000 BC,” a tagline on the project’s website joked.

For gadget geeks, it’s a neat example of thinking outside of the box, and fans found it appealing to potentially replace a drawer full of spoons with a more futuristic-looking compact tool. Most backers signed up for a single set, paying $8–$12 each, while hundreds wanted up to 25 sets, a handful ordered 50, and just one backer signed up for 100. Delivery was initially promised by 2017, supposedly shipping to anywhere in the world.

But it’s been about nine years since more than 30,000 backers flocked to the Kickstarter campaign—raising more than $1 million and eclipsing Polygons’ $10,000 goal. And not only have more than a third of the backers not received their spoons, but now, after years of updates claiming that the spoons had been shipped, some backers began to wonder if the entire campaign might be a fraud. They could see that Polygons are currently being sold on social media and suspected that the maker might be abusing backers’ funds to chase profits, seemingly without ever seriously intending to fulfill their orders.

One Kickstarter backer, Caskey Hunsader, told Ars that he started doubting if the spoon’s designer—an inventor from India, Rahul Agarwal—was even a real person.

Ars reached out to verify Agarwal’s design background. We confirmed that, yes, Agarwal is a real designer, and, yes, he believes there is a method to the madness when it comes to his Kickstarter campaign, which he said was never intended to be a scam or fraud and is currently shipping spoons to backers. He forecasted that 2025 is likely the year that backers’ wait will finally end.

But as thousands of complaints on the Kickstarter attest, backers have heard that one before. It’s been two years since the last official update was posted, which only promised updates that never came and did not confirm that shipments were back on track. The prior update in 2022 promised that “the time has finally arrived when we begin bulk shipping to everyone!”

Hunsader told Ars that people seem mostly upset because of “bullshit,” which is widely referenced in the comments. And that anger is compounded “by the fact that they are producing, and they are selling this product, so they are operating their business using funds that all these people who were their first backers gave them, and we’re the ones who are not getting the product. I think that’s where the anger comes from.”

“It’s been years now, and [I’ve] watched as you promise good people their products and never deliver,” one commenter wrote. “Wherever you try… to sell [your] products, we will be there reminding them of the empty orders you left here.”

“Where is my item? I am beyond angry,” another fumed.

Those who did receive their spoons often comment on the substantial delays, but reviews are largely positive.

“Holy crap, folks,” a somewhat satisfied backer wrote. “Hell has frozen over. I finally got them (no BS).”

One backer was surprised to get twice as many spoons as expected, referencing an explanation blaming Chinese New Year for one delay and writing, “I can honestly say after 8 years… and an enormous amount of emails, I finally received my pledge. Except… I only ordered 3… and I received 6. I’d be inclined to ship some back to Polygons… bare with me… I’ll return them soon… I appreciate your patience… mebbe after Chinese New Years 2033…”

Agarwal agreed to meet with Ars, show us the spoon, and explain why backers still haven’t gotten their deliveries when the spoon appears widely available to purchase online.

Failing prototypes and unusable cheap knockoffs

As a designer, Agarwal is clearly a perfectionist. He was just a student when he had the idea for Polygons in 2014, winning design awards and garnering interest that encouraged him to find a way to manufacture the spoons. He felt eager to see people using them.

Agarwal told Ars that before he launched the Kickstarter, he had prototypes made in China that were about 85 percent of the quality that he and his collaborators at InventIndia required. Anticipating that the quality would be fully there soon, Agarwal launched the Kickstarter, along with marketing efforts that Agarwal said had to be squashed due to unexpectedly high interest in the spoons.

This is when things started spiraling, as Agarwal had to switch manufacturers five times, with each partner crashing into new walls trying to execute the novel product.

Once the Kickstarter hit a million dollars, though, Agarwal committed to following through on launching the product. Eventually, cheap knockoff versions began appearing online on major retail sites like Walmart and Amazon toward the end of 2024. Because Agarwal has patents and trademarks for his design, he can get the knockoffs taken down, but they proved an important point that Agarwal had learned the hard way: that his design, while appearing simplistic, was incredibly hard to pull off.

Ars handled both a legitimate Polygons spoon and a cheap knockoff. The knockoff was a flimsy, unusable slab of rubber dotted with magnets; the companies aping Agarwal’s idea are seemingly unable to replicate the manufacturing process that Agarwal has spent years perfecting to finally be able to widely ship Polygons today.

On the other hand, Agarwal’s spoon is sturdy, uses food-grade materials, and worked just as well measuring wet and dry ingredients during an Ars test. A silicon hinge connects 19 separate plastic pieces and ensures that magnets neatly snap along indented lines indicating if the measurement is a quarter, half, or whole teaspoon or tablespoon. It took Agarwal two and a half years to finalize the design while working with InventIndia, a leading product development firm in India. Prototyping required making special molds that took a month each to iterate rather than using a 3D-printing shortcut whereby multiple prototypes could be made in a day, which Agarwal said he’d initially anticipated could be possible.

Around the time that the prototyping process concluded, Agarwal noted, COVID hit, and supply chains were disrupted, causing production setbacks. Once production could resume, costs became a factor, as estimates used to set Kickstarter backer awards were based on the early failed Chinese prototype, and the costs of producing a functioning spoon were much higher. Over time, shipping costs also rose.

As Kickstarter funds dwindled, there was no going back, so Agarwal devised a plan to sell the spoons for double the price ($25–$30 a set) by marketing them on social media, explaining this in a note to backers posted on the Polygons site. Those sales would fund ongoing manufacturing, allowing profits to be recycled so that Kickstarter backers could gradually receive shipments dependent on social media sales volumes. Orders from anyone who paid extra for expedited shipping are prioritized.

It’s a math problem at this point, with more funding needed to scale. But Agarwal told Ars that sales on Shopify and TikTok Shop have increased each quarter, most recently selling 30,000 units on TikTok, which allowed Polygons to take out a bigger line of credit to fund more manufacturing. He also brought in a more experienced partner to focus on the business side while he optimizes production.

Agarwal told Ars that he understands trust has been broken with many Kickstarter backers, considering that totally fair. While about 38 percent of backers’ orders still need filling, he predicts that all backers could get their orders within the next six to eight months as Polygons becomes better resourced, but that still depends on social media sales.

Agarwal met Ars after attending a housewares show in Chicago, where he shopped the spoons with retailers who may also help scale the product in the coming years. He anticipates that as the business scales, the cost of the spoons will come back down. And he may even be able to move onto executing other product designs that have been on the backburner as he attempts to work his way out of the Kickstarter corner he backed himself into while obsessing over his first design.

Kickstarter problem goes beyond Polygons

Hunsader told Ars there’s a big difference “in a lie versus bad management,” suggesting that as a business owner who has managed Kickstarter campaigns, he thinks more transparency likely could’ve spared Polygons a lot of angry comments.

“I am not sitting here with a dart board with [Agarwal’s] face on it, being like, when am I going to get my damn spoons?” Hunsader joked. But the campaign’s Kickstarter messaging left many backers feeling like Polygons took backers’ money and ran, Hunsader said.

Unlike people who saw the spoons going viral on social media, Hunsader discovered Polygons just by scrolling on Kickstarter. As a fan of geeky gadgets, he used to regularly support campaigns, but his experience supporting Polygons and monitoring other cases of problematic Kickstarters have made him more hesitant to use the platform without more safeguards for backers.

“It’s not specifically a Polygons problem,” Hunsader told Ars. “The whole Kickstarter thing needs maybe just more protections in place.”

Kickstarter did not respond to Ars’ request to comment. But Kickstarter’s “accountability” policy makes clear that creators “put their reputation at risk” launching campaigns and are ultimately responsible for following through on backer promises. Kickstarter doesn’t issue refunds or guarantee projects, only providing limited support when backers report “suspicious activity.”

Redditors have flagged “shitty” Kickstarter campaigns since 2012, three years after the site’s founding, and the National Association of Attorneys General—which represents US state attorneys general—suggested in 2019 that disgruntled crowdfunding backers were increasingly turning to consumer protection laws to fight alleged fraud.

In 2015, an independent analysis by the University of Pennsylvania estimated that 9 percent of Kickstarter projects didn’t fulfill their rewards. More recently, it appeared that figure had doubled, as Fortune reported last year that an internal Kickstarter estimate put “the amount of revenue that comes from fraudulent projects as high as 18 percent.” A spokesperson disputed that estimate and told Fortune that the platform employs “extensive” measures to detect fraud.

Agarwal told Ars that he thinks it’s uncommon for a campaign to continue fulfilling backer rewards after eight years of setbacks. It would be easier to just shut down and walk away, and Kickstarter likely would not have penalized him for it. While the Kickstarter campaign allowed him to reach his dream of seeing people using his novel measuring spoon in the real world, it’s been bittersweet that the campaign has dragged out so long and kept the spoons out of the hands of his earliest supporters, he told Ars.

Hunsader told Ars that he hopes the Polygons story serves as a “cautionary tale” for both backers and creators who bite off more than they can chew when launching a Kickstarter campaign. He knows that designers like Agarwal can take a reputational hit.

“I don’t want to make somebody who has big dreams not want to dream, but you also, when you’re dealing with things like manufacturing technology, have to be realistic about what is and is not accomplishable,” Hunsader said.

Polygons collaborators at InventIndia told Ars that Agarwal is “dedicated and hard-working,” describing him as “someone deeply committed to delivering a product that meets the highest standards” and whose intentions have “always” been to “ship a perfect product.”

Agarwal’s team connected with Hunsader to schedule his Kickstarter reward shipment on Friday. Hunsader told Ars he doesn’t really care if it takes another nine years. It’s just a spoon, and “there are bigger fish to fry.”

“Listen, I can buy that narrative that he was somebody who got totally overwhelmed but handled it in the worst possible way ever,” Hunsader said.

He plans to continue patiently waiting for his spoons.

This story was updated on March 14 to update information on the Polygons Kickstarter campaign.