Kids Inventors on Ellen

Last week, Ellen hosted some children who had invented some pretty cool things! Here’s the scoop:

8-year-old twins from Columbus are showing a national TV audience the wedgie-proof underwear they’ve invented.

Jared and Justin Serovich are appearing on today’s “Ellen DeGeneres Show” with the briefs that got them to the finals in a central Ohio invention competition.

The third graders from Gables Elementary took apart some old underwear and put Velcro in the seams, so if a bully tries to pull up on the shorts, they just tear apart.

The Serovich boys call their creation the “Rip Away 1000.”

Then there’s this:

Kid inventor Jake Wulf got his two minutes of fame – and a Dell computer on Friday.

Appearing on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” the 9-year-old Odebolt, Iowa, fourth grader wowed the talk show host with the Privy Prop — a foot-activated toilet seat lifter that was born out of, well, necessity.

Because he didn’t put the toilet seat down, “mom was getting mad and she was falling in the toilet,” Jake told DeGeneres.

“Your mom is tiny,” the Emmy-winning host replied.

more after the jump!

During his two-minute segment within Kid Inventors, a popular DeGeneres feature, Jake said he got the idea when he was at his doctor’s office. He saw a metal trash can with a pedal on it and figured he could adapt it for toilet use.

Jake’s appearance came after a Connecticut 9-year-old tested a solar-powered automatic air freshener and before 8-year-old twins from Ohio demonstrated rip-away, “wedgie-proof” underwear. As a token of her appreciation, DeGeneres handed out Dell notebook computers to each of the four.

Jake, a student at Odebolt-Arthur Elementary School, wore a red and white-striped rugby shirt and khaki pants. He showed the most restraint of the four (the air freshener kid jumped around like a pogo stick) and smiled broadly when DeGeneres handed him the computer.

“That’s really smart,” she said when she first saw the Privy Prop.

In her monologue, DeGeneres told the audience she loved having kid inventors on the show. “I steal their ideas and then go on the Home Shopping Network.”

Jake wouldn’t mind the help. In a Journal story Friday, he said a patent might cost too much, so he was hoping someone might help him turn the idea into a money maker.

Taped Wednesday in Hollywood, the show aired Friday on KTIV. But it wasn’t the first outing for the Privy Prop. Monday, he’ll give it a final outing at school.

More important? He’ll be able to tell his classmates what it was like to be privy to the inner workings of daytime television.

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