Cable TV and free-to-air breakfast shows have one awful thing in common, and it’s advertising for unnecessary products.
Some infomercials have become so infamous that they’ve established a cultural zeitgeist, and ads for kitchen appliances are often the worst of a bad bunch.
Mainly because as useless as they are, you know that your ageing mother is filling her home with them as you read this.
Sometimes, these cursed objects are both a massive waste of space and an unholy crime. Such as the case of the vertical egg cooker.
Looking into it is like staring into the void, only things do reemerge from it (and you’ll wish they hadn’t). No one needs a long egg on a skewer! You don’t need to eat an egg like a shish kebab! It’s not okay! Just make a damn omelette like the rest of us!
And speaking of pointless egg-related purchases, have you seen ‘Egglettes’? How can you be so pedantic about eggshell that you’d rather boil your eggs in silicon condoms than in their natural sheaths?
Don’t even get me started on the ‘ShakeNegg’ and its ‘unique cooking dome’ technology (spoiler: it’s a lid) which is somehow even more unnecessary – y’all, eggs are not supposed to be this complex!
Go one step further and you find yourself in the realm of the gadgets made to accommodate peak laziness, things like the ‘Nutrislicer’ or ‘Nicer Dicer’, which despite the enticing names are essentially an automation of the most basic cooking skill there is – cutting. Just use a knife you demons!
Let’s not forget to shame the ‘Pasta Boat’ here either – you cannot fool me into thinking that’s anything other than a plastic container. I’m not even convinced that strainer would work without all your spaghetti flowing out and down the sink.
Then there’s a special variety of products I like to call ‘Things I Want And Don’t Need’, all of which are hyper-specialised gadgets that get used a handful of times at best, before being wedged in a corner to accrue dust til the next garage sale.
In this category you’ll find popcorn machines, ice-cream machines, yoghurt makers, doughnut makers, pancake makers, deep fryers, air fryers, fondue fountains… the list is endless.
Pretty much any baked good you can think of has an accompanying cooker, all of which are basically mini ovens with specifically shaped grooves.
They’re great for a party trick and not much more, but boy oh boy is it easy to get addicted to collecting them. And I am 100% certain they only exist so you can gift people with an eternal burden.
But the cream of the crop (ha, food pun) has to be *drumroll* the ‘Hover Cover’. I have no words for how mad this makes me. Every selling point is something that you could achieve with anything that isn’t this product. Look, I’m just going to embed the ad and let you draw your own conclusions.
