Pizza burn. We've all been there. Sometimes you are just too excited when digging into a piping hot, fresh pie. You chomp too soon and the roof of your mouth pays the ultimate price. Pain and humiliation ensues. The rest of those sad, cheesy triangles have to sit there until you can safely chew again. This tyranny has to end! Thanks to the magic of science, we are now one step closer.

Jason McConville, an associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of New Mexico, burned the roof of his mouth on a slice of Chicago deep dish and decided to do something about it. He developed a dissolvable mouth strip embedded with the local anesthesia benzocaine. This is the same stuff sometimes used in cough drops and dentists' offices. Upon using one of these strips, the pain in your mouth will subside. The relief lasts up to a few hours, at which point the wound would have mostly healed anyway. Also, that's just the right amount of time to scarf down another slice or ten.

These mango-flavored strips are only a concept design for now. Until McConville gets permission to sell these on store shelves, we'll have to make due with ice cubes or, gasp, waiting until pizza cools down before biting into it. The horror. The horror.