Because brushing your teeth is just too hard.

[lemon_says]

I hate those commercials where they use ineptitude as justification for the existence of their product. Like when they try to sell the pasta pot with the holes in the lid, they show all these people dumping their spaghetti into the sink, or on the floor, or anywhere but into the colander.

It's not that hard to drain spaghetti.

There's one where the person is trying to cut a straight line to separate some photos, and the scissors veer off across one photo to show how she needs the straight-line-chopper. The can tops all drop into cans, contaminating tuna or splashing soup, because these people didn't have the magnetized can opener. People chopping vegetables cut their fingers and fling zucchini hither and yon. Eggs are burned, pancakes folded. I just now saw a commercial for a spinning toothbrush because brushing your teeth manually is "a lot of work." I don't personally consider brushing my teeth to be particularly taxing, but maybe it's just me.

The banana slicer is, I'm sure, one of the most necessary inventions known to man.

What is the least-necessary gadget that you own?

Comments

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

An egg-piercer.

[jaysaint.livejournal.com]

That pasta cooker commercial kills me. I love how all the actors have this "Oh My God! Pasta! Help me!" thing going on.

I don't have room for any superfluous gadgets, but I can tell you one that I thought would be and it turned out to be fantastic -- my little metal lemon squeezer I bought in San Antonio.

I can squeeze a lemon. Hard. I know I can warm it and roll it to get more juice. And I've had a plastic lemon squeezer before. But this metal guy has a rough surface and it really grabs the peel. I swear I could lemonade a whole front porch worth of Southerners in five minutes with the amount of juice this thing extracts.

[blakdove.livejournal.com]

My mom loves useless gadgets. This Christmas, we got two! One was a lighted magnifying eyebrow tweezer. Now, the light and the magnifyer are great, but the actual tweezers don't tweeze.

The second one was a plastic tube for cooking spaghetti. You put spaghetti into it, add boiling water, and add ten minutes. How that saves us any time or energy over boiling water in a pot and adding the pasta to that and waiting 7 minutes, I'm still not sure. But, here we are.

I break spinning toothbrushes because I brush too vigorously anyway. They're for wimps.

[heathrow.livejournal.com]

The apple slicer. It takes me more time than just getting a knife and slicing it.

[pipistrella.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to think. I like gadgets, but my taste doesn't generally run to kitchen gadgets unless you count my tea infuser and maybe those little silicon egg-poaching cups. I also have this Japanese tomato knife that could slice a hair lengthwise. I love that knife.

The banana slicer is stupid. I'd like, however, to officially exclude bagel slicers from this list because slicing a bagel really can be a pain.

Unnecessary, yet cool? I have a wireless speaker with a built-in woofer in an 800 sq. foot apartment. I could blow out the walls with this thing. I realize that's a different theme - I can't think of anything I own to keep me from screwing something up like the people in the commercials.

I am so getting you an Octodog for Christmas.

[travellight.livejournal.com]

Shrimp deveiner. Because the chances of me buying shrimp that aren't already deveined? So slim as to be neglible.

[wolfmare.livejournal.com]

Gods, this is a tough one. I'm an artist, name it. I actually just finished tossing about half of my paintbrushes because I had so many of the exact same thing.

Dip pen, useless since I get better control with a brush.

Garlic press, since we started buying the pre-minced jars of the stuff.

Not one, but TWO blenders, which we never actually use.

Um... Yeah, the list goes on.

[raving-liberal.livejournal.com]

My mom actually bought the makin bacon (http://www.makinbacon.com/welcome.htm) thing. The bacon came out dry and tasteless.

ETA: I have to add that my Cook's Essentials pasta pot has a strainer lid and it's the best damn thing ever. Delicate pasta like tortellini fall apart sometimes when you pour them into a colander, but the strainer lid means you don't have to transfer them. Plus, you only have to wash one thing.

[pearl-and-rose.livejournal.com]

I LIKE my egg slicer, thank you very much.

And I think we're all familiar with my avacado masher.

[martina-d.livejournal.com]

Well, my (idiot) mother-in-law actually gave me one of those pair of battery-operated scissors. Now, how much cutting would one have to do to make it worthwhile to use scissors that require batteries? For one thing, they are much heavier than a pair of regular scissors. For another thing, it takes about as much energy to squeeze the trigger than to squeeze blades open and shut. But I can see why they appealed to her...

[aspira.livejournal.com]

Well we do use our stupid gadgets - I have the pot with holes, the apple corer - and the veggie chopper. I would say the pot is rarely used anymore.

[1smart1.livejournal.com]

All of the above? But then again, you've never seen me in the kitchen . . . or in the bathroom. Some of us actually need this stuff. Some of us are actually THAT inept.