Sugar says "I want you to come up with a new product blah blah blah" and then we watch the show and mock the candidates for their naff products. But be honest here - it's very, very hard to come up with something radical, exciting, new, in an hour or so. Almost impossible.

I doubt many people would come up with an amazing product. Perhaps if you spent months and you have that sort of imaginative mind you can come up with something but within a few hours? Nah, almost impossible, don't you think?

It's funny to see the crappy products they come up with but I'm sure we'd struggle too.

I thought the Splish Splash product was rather good. Perhaps a bit too small for a bath but an interesting idea.

they dont have to invent it though

they just come up with ideas then speak to designers who invent it for them

they maybe only have a few hours do things but they have assistance available to them, even all their sales are vrtually handed to them on a plate

I agree floopy, its a huge ask to come up with an innovative product that is also profitable and sellable in a matter of hours.
It really is a matter of luck - if one team has one good idea they should walk it, but if they don't get that good idea in the first place they can never recover.

Yeah but it's hard to come up with an original idea. Most stuff has been done and finding a new spin on some old product is very hard. I thought the concept of a water bath guard which allows children to draw on the plastic glass was imaginative. Sugar dismissed the product but I thought it was imaginative. Okay, perhaps it needed a lot of tweaking but I was impressed by the idea of it stopping water spillage and being used as a drawing tool.

You never know, some great new artist could use it in the bath.

The thing is it isn't about 'inventing' the product. I mean if it were that easy to come up with something that would sell they wouldn't need to go on the show.

It's about getting the processes right. That you have an idea of a gap in the market or who are big consumers, that you follow market research and that you pitch correctly and have your figures worked out.

I mean the buyers actually 'buy' (maybe I'm wrong on this). They're just glorified judges who assess how well the teams have got the fundementals right and give a score in the guise of an imaginary order.

Given that the winner was to be one the on that sold the most units, not took the most money the ideal product should have been something which sold for £1 and would have attracted a large, but low cost, number of orders.

I actually liked the Bath tap Cosy idea! But I think as Katie came up with it Jenna had to put the boot in and go with the spash screen thing.

But even the tap cosy idea was flawed.Hugh and Dara on YF pointed out that we don't rest our heads on the tap side of the bath.

To be fair, wasn't the original idea somewhere to rest your feet? The tap cosy was the best of a bad bunch, much better than the splash screen/riot shield. Even that might have been OK if they hadn't decided to turn it into a toy. Lakeland might have ordered some if it hadn't been for the crayon idea which was tacked on.

How that piece of plastic (which didn't stop splashes) became an "entertainment centre with storage" is beyond understanding. Mind you the idea that a bin became a "multifunctional composter" by adding a plunger to crush stuff was equally unlikely.

Something the fired lady said it Dara was quite relevant. She said something along the lines of "It was kitchen or bathroom and we were too slow so they got the kitchen. What can you do with the bathroom?"

So they were limited in scope to those 2 rooms, and then limited again by not having a free choice of either. Sounds like the blokes jumped in and nabbed the kitchen gadget and they had no option but to design one for the bathroom.

I don't mind the producers limiting the scope, but they could at least allow them to have an even playing field.

Yet another unmentioned Apprentice rule. I guess the idea was their products wouldn't be competing for the same market with the retailers. Presumably they all knew they had to make their choice quickly to get the room they wanted, so it's a perfectly fair rule. The boys prioritised the choice of room, the girls appeared to be really slow off the mark. But there was still plenty of scope for bathroom ideas if they had opened their minds.

Robotic tooth brush machine?

You bend down and a robotic hand brushes your teeth. Just make sure you open your mouth quick enough otherwise you get your face covered in toothpaste.

I will email Tom (last series winner) and get him to design it. :P

I think you're missing the point a little here...the point of it was to test abilities of idea-generation, research, development and pitching of an idea. The women's brainstorming session suggested they would have had trouble no matter what went on - nobody took the reins and started just by talking about what people do in the bathroom, there was no flow between the girls - though we'll never know if the boys had a similar problem down to the way the show is edited.

What point am I missing? I was replying to a specific point about the restriction on the room. I made a guess as to why the rule was put there, but said that it was fair for both teams. Yes the girls brainstorming was weak (just one idea), but that had nothing to do with being forced to choose a bathroom product.

To suggest it was the editing that made the girls look slow and the boys full of enthusiasm is silly. Editing can change emphasis, but it can't add things which didn't happen. The boys chose the room and their product quickly. Editing can't change that.

You're assuming that the room restriction was a fact, but the point is that it shouldn't really matter if there IS one - the girls didn't brainstorm ideas well enough.

And I never suggested anything, merely mentioned that we won't know how long the boys took over it due to the editing. Editing might make it seem like they chose their product within minutes, but we won't know if it really took that long or not. You're the one insinuating I suggested the things you're suggesting, when all I said was we won't know.

But in his intro LS says a new household gadget - and he mentioned the garden in that as well..... What I think Maria meant was that once the kitchen had gone - they had to choose something else.... and the boys grabbed the kitchen quickly meaning the girls had to choose a gadget from another part of the house....

They could have had bathroom, living room, bedroom, utility room, garden, garage, pets.... anywhere except the kitchen...

And I thought the tap cosy was for resting your feet on when lying back in the bath.....

But if you had two children sharing a bath it would prevent them bumping their heads on the taps (because one will be at the tap end). That's why the Mums in the toddler group loved it.

I had two young children sharing a bath but I can honestly say they never bumped their heads on the taps

To be fair, we don't know what is in the rules. It's perfectly possible that the mention of the garden was just to make the viewers think that they had a free choice, and they were actually limited to kitchen and bathroom.

Absolutely. A cute novelty thermometer with a big red line showing when the water gets too hot for safety, ideal for parents and carers. Retail price on Amazon of similar products but without the safety markings - £1.50. Buy 10,000,000 of these and get a free lollipop (a marketing suggestion for Sterling).

Mine neither. However, lots of 'safety' products are sold to parents who don't think about whether or not there is a serious so 'prevention of head bumping' would be a genuine selling point. In fact, Amazon already sells a soft tap cover and also a 'bath gate' to protect against 'bumped heads or playing with the taps while your little one is in the bath'.

On 'You're Fired' Maria certainly seemed to say that it was either kitchen or bathroom and the boys nabbed kitchen so the girls were stuck with bathroom.

My brother did when he was a toddler. He for some reason stood up unexpectedly and slipped, landing his mouth on a tap. He has a lip scar and a chipped tooth as lovely mementos from that incident.

I really liked the tap caddy idea. It's annoying when I want to rest my feet on them, but can't because one tap feels too hot and the other feels cold. Putting my feet on either bath corner makes the position uncomfortable. Ah, don't mind me. Anyway, I'd buy one if I see it.

Maybe she meant that the girls were struggling to decide between kitchen and bathroom, so when the boys chose kitchen they decided to choose bathroom.

Maybe she was misquoted by the person who quoted her.

Maybe it was a free choice and they chose bathroom, but then couldn't think of anything they wanted to invent.

I've banged my head on them errrm as an adult

Also if I share the bath I always have the tap end so it would make a good head rest