Electric can opener – Note the can. It is a ring pull. Oh the irony!
Here’s an observation. Today it seems that for almost every task in the home there is now an electric-powered solution, whether it be a can opener, carving knife or an egg cracker (I kid you not).
These appliances may not all the be most energy-intensive products, but when you add all the energy consumption up and the materials need to manufacture and distribute them, you have to decide whether they are really worth it.
Wouldn’t traditional hand-operated devices be far more practical especially when they cost nothing to run, are cheaper to buy, and less prone to breaking?
We always choose hand-operated over electro-gadgets, but I don’t think this is the norm. Mind you, I have even seen hand-operated gadgets that are simply a waste of space as well as being made from non-recyclable plastic. Crazy stuff.
What is the strangest electro-gadget madness that you have seen that has a viable hand-operated alternative? Let me know via comment and start a bit of a community thread happening. This should be entertaining because I am sure there are lots of crazy things out there.
An electric ‘dog pooper scooper’. Their advertising slogan is “Never stop to pick up poop again – the power stool tool”……………Gav don’t you just want to run out now and buy one?
You just beat me to it…. I just saw the electric dog scooper too, plus a whole lot of weird gadgets at http://www.pcworld.com/article/190478/Weird_Gadgets.html
My 2 personal favourites I’ve seen over time was my grandma’s electric can opener and knife sharpener. To give it a little credit it was before ring pull cans but even so. The other was one I must admit we purchased (overseas and it never passed customs) back in the days before becoming green – an electric fly swat. You still had to swing the thing, which now weighed 10 times more and hit the fly but instead of squishing it, you zapped the thing. It was the size of a small tennis racquet. Nuts hey.
Actually, we have one of those electric fly swatters and it’s great! You can just hold it over a bowl the flies are in, or hover it over an uneven surface, and the flies zap themselves when they fly into it.
A friend in the US tells me his daughter’s boyfriend bought her a remote device which starts the car from inside the house…so it’s running and warmed up by the time she gets out of the shower. I ask you!!!
I was in big w a few weeks back and found a single serve egg cooker. You’d use spray oil and crack egg into it and it would cook it as a long tube and come out as a “perfectly cooked egg” it did only one egg at a time.