http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/13/stingray-6-in-1-multitool-not-as-cool-as-name
3 Likes
That was funny…It’s hard to believe these types of devices are actually
manufactured and purchased.
I had a momentary flashback to the first time I had escargot in a restaurant,
I think I was nine or ten… I nearly killed someone at the opposite side of the
dining room…
1 Like
They’re tricky little fuckers to eat, aren’t they? '-D
1 Like
Well… There are plenty of “these types of devices”–lame as they may be–on the shelves and hanging displays of all major kitchen departments and stores. They make an obscene amount of money as impulse buys. At least it’s not a unitasker.
Kitchen gadget industrial design is very thin gruel indeed…
Aloha,
Kaleo
I had to look that up
and found the Alton Brown video posted below… hilarious as well
Another memory triggered…
My parents were divorced by the time I was an adolescent. I would spend most weekends, with my brilliant but very crazy father, sometimes a friend or two would join me. My dad was artistic, creative, both a wonderful chef and baker with a passion for all things food and had a wicked sense of humor. When not practicing medicine or cooking he would be at the hospital. At his disposal was his laboratory at Columbia Presbyterian where he had a research grant…to say we had lots of cool things at our disposal would be an understatement.
A favorite activity of his was to have us bake cakes in stainless steel bedpans to bring home to my mother and her boyfriend …My friends thought this was fabulous and looked forward to bringing their cakes home to their respective family members as well…The bed pans used were new and kept at home.
3 Likes
Last escargot I had were served with a holding tool cleverly designed to be used by hands other than human. The fact that mine are well over seventy years old did not help. I too launched one across the table, though it was intercepted by the bread basket, so I just waited until the bastards were cool enough to grab and dug the good parts out with my fork.
I knew a woman whose late father had labored for years to perfect a butter-holder that was slotted at regular intervals, to facilitate the cutting of uniform slices. He managed to patent it, I think, and tried to interest various kitchen-gadget firms in producing it. An outfit in Illinois asked for particulars, and then asked him why his design did not fit the standard stick of butter. He, being California born and bred, asked what this “stick” was, when everyone knows it’s more a cube … after he and the Illinois guys finally understood that Eastern and Western butter in the US come in two different shapes, it was decided that tooling up for different dimensions would not be worth the trouble, although I think most of us would have made that decision long before.
And then we have this thing, which should also have been killed long before any were made …
1 Like
Need I say more?
1 Like
The Guardian runs the gadget features pretty much every week. I have yet to see one that I would consider buying but I suppose that’s the point.
Oops. I meant for my butter-holder post to be a reply to yours.
Really? Does the butter difference still hold true?
The last escargot I ate were in a Chinese restaurant and came, in black bean sauce, with nothing but toothpicks to eat them with. 
The last couple of times I’ve had snails they were served out of the shell.
However, the last time I had “sea snails” (whelks), it was part of a seafood platter in Calais. We were each given 5 or 6 different implements to deal with the various foods. Nope, no idea what most of them were but it was a great lunch, if one eaten not very elegantly.
Okay. The answer is clear. The Stingray is stupid. So are many if not most kitchen gadgets.
Yeah, I grew up eating a lot of periwinkles in black bean sauce, and your tool of choice was a case load of toothpicks. Not so much escargots, or the size I think of with French escargot dishes, but you really need something to poke and pull those suckers out.
I laughed out loud
Certain dental instruments work well
It shouldn’t be that difficult to imagine. Every year we have plenty inefficient tools introduced to us. Some were never successful, but some were temporary successful due to great marketing campaign. The idea is not so much about inventing an useful tool, but about: can we pull in enough cash before they notice this is a piece of crap.
For example, I would argue that the Slap Chop is absolutely useless. However, it caught on and was a successful in term of revenue. Is it really a useful tool? I doubt it is for most people. Yet, it was popular for awhile. So popular that even other companies jump in the hype.
