The EZ Butter Dispenser: A Device That Deposits Butter Without Spreading It, Solving a Problem That Doesn't Exist
Discontinued because it was EZ for people not to buy it
I need you to imagine the pitch meeting for this product because it must have been unhinged.
Someone walked into a conference room and said: "What if butter... but from a tube?" And instead of being escorted from the building by security, this person was given a development budget. Money was spent. Molds were made. Packaging was designed. A product was manufactured, shipped to stores, placed on shelves, and sold to human beings who exchanged legal currency for a plastic cylinder that dispenses a ribbon of butter onto bread without spreading it.
The EZ Butter Dispenser was a hand-cranked tube. You loaded a stick of butter into it. You turned a dial on the end. A thin ribbon of butter was extruded from the front, like a butter-flavored caulk gun. The ribbon sat on top of your toast in a decorative curl, cold and unspreadable, like a gift that nobody asked for from an appliance that nobody needed.
It did not spread the butter. It deposited the butter. These are different verbs with different outcomes. Depositing butter on bread is not buttering bread. It is placing cold butter on warm bread and hoping for the best, which is what happens when you skip the step that matters — the spreading — and replace it with a hand-crank mechanism that makes you look like you're operating a tiny pencil sharpener for dairy products.
The EZ Butter Dispenser has been discontinued. The market spoke. The market said no.
The Vision: Butter, but Complicated
The infomercial — because of course there was an infomercial — showed a person struggling to spread cold butter on bread. The knife tears the bread. The butter crumbles. The person's face contorts with a level of frustration normally reserved for tax audits and IKEA furniture assembly. This is the As-Seen-On-TV formula: manufacture a problem, exaggerate the suffering, then present a solution that costs $19.99.
The EZ Butter Dispenser was that solution. Load the stick. Turn the crank. A perfect ribbon emerges. The infomercial showed the ribbon curling gracefully onto toast, onto corn, onto pancakes, like soft-serve ice cream but made of butter and disappointment.
What the infomercial didn't show: the butter needs to be at room temperature for the ribbon to work smoothly, which means if your butter is already at room temperature, you could just spread it with a knife. In three seconds. Without a crank. The product that solves the problem of hard butter only works with soft butter, at which point you don't need the product.
This is a logical paradox wearing a plastic shell and sold for $19.99.
The Glorious User Experience
Tim from Boise, ID — ★☆☆☆☆
"I used the EZ Butter once. The butter was cold. The crank produced not a smooth ribbon but a series of jagged butter shavings that looked like I'd taken a wood plane to a stick of Land O'Lakes. The shavings sat on my toast like tiny butter tombstones, cold and separate and completely unspread. I then used a knife. The knife worked. The knife has always worked. The EZ Butter went into the drawer of shame where kitchen gadgets go to die. It is there now, between the avocado slicer and the egg separator that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. One star."
Debbie from Tampa, FL — ★☆☆☆☆
"The cleaning. How do you clean a tube full of butter residue? You can't put it in the dishwasher because it has a crank mechanism. You can't submerge it because it has moving parts. You have to disassemble it and wash each component by hand, which takes longer than the act of buttering toast has ever taken in the history of toast. I spent four minutes cleaning a device that saved me zero seconds. Net time loss: four minutes and $19.99 of dignity."
“" And instead of being escorted from the building by security, this person was given a development budget”
Click to TweetScott from Minneapolis, MN — ★☆☆☆☆
"The butter ribbon is decorative. DECORATIVE. It sits on top of the bread like a garnish at a restaurant where the chef hates you. You still have to spread it with a knife to get actual butter coverage. So the workflow is: load butter into tube, crank handle, deposit ribbon, pick up knife, spread ribbon. The workflow without the EZ Butter is: pick up knife, spread butter. I have added three steps to a one-step process. This is negative innovation. This is progress running backward."
Nancy from Seattle, WA — ★★☆☆☆
"Two stars because I used it to decorate a birthday cake and the butter ribbons looked kind of nice as a border, and I acknowledge that this is not what the product was designed for and also that using butter as cake decoration is not something a mentally well person does. Two stars."
The Truth: The Butter Problem Was Solved in Antiquity
The "problem" the EZ Butter Dispenser claims to solve — hard butter is difficult to spread — has been solved since approximately 3000 BC, when humans discovered that leaving butter at room temperature makes it soft. The French Butter Dish, also known as a Butter Bell, was invented specifically for this purpose: it keeps butter at room temperature while preventing it from going rancid, using a water seal inside a ceramic crock. Cost: $15. Lifespan: forever. Complexity: zero.
For people who prefer refrigerated butter, the solution is equally ancient: use a knife and apply moderate pressure. The bread may tear slightly if the butter is very cold, but this is a cosmetic issue, not a structural one. Your toast still functions as toast. The butter still functions as butter. The system works.
The EZ Butter Dispenser attempted to insert itself into a process that didn't need disruption. Butter-to-bread is a solved equation. It has been solved for millennia. The knife is the technology. The butter dish is the optimization. Everything beyond that is a drawer-filler.
The product was discontinued, which is the consumer market's way of saying "we tried this and humanity collectively declined." The EZ Butter Dispenser now exists primarily as a punchline in unitasker discussions, a footnote in As-Seen-On-TV history, and a resident of kitchen drawers across America where it will remain, unused and unlamented, until the heat death of the universe or the next garage sale, whichever comes first.
The Verdict
The EZ Butter Dispenser is a $19.99 caulk gun for dairy that was discontinued because the world already has knives. It adds three steps to a one-step process. It requires soft butter to work, at which point you don't need it. It deposits without spreading, which is like a shower that gets you wet without getting you clean.
It was EZ to ignore. EZ to discontinue. EZ to replace with the knife that was sitting in your drawer the entire time, silently doing its job without a crank handle or a plastic shell or an infomercial that pretends spreading butter is difficult.
We rate it 1 out of 5 butter pats.
If you want butter on your bread — applied, spread, and functional — see our alternatives below.
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✅What to Buy Instead
OXO Good Grips Butter Dish
Simple covered butter dish. $10. Works perfectly. No crank. No ribbon. No disassembly required. Holds butter. That's the whole pitch.
Any Knife
Literally any knife can spread butter. This technology has existed for millennia. Dishwasher safe. No infomercial needed. The original EZ Butter.
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