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When Richard Sapper designed a kettle for Alessi in 1983, he decided the actual problem worth solving wasn't the shape — it was the whistle. He traveled to Germany to find craftsmen who could tune a brass whistle to two specific musical notes, inspired by boat sirens he remembered from childhood on the Rhine. The result, the 9091, has been in continuous production for over 40 years.

In 1977, Erik Magnussen was asked to design a follow-up to Arne Jacobsen's Cylinda-Line. His EM77 vacuum jug solved a problem every thermos of the era had — a stopper you had to unscrew and put down somewhere — with a self-tipping lid he figured out by watching a gimballed instrument on his sailboat. Almost 50 years and 100+ colors later, it's still in production.