Hasta La Ideas

Nostalgia Electrics makes this 1950s-styled Family Breakfast Station machine:

I was about to slam it—what need for this thing could there possibly be?—but headed over to Amazon first to read the reviews on it. The majority of them are positive, with three out of five people giving it five stars. Reading through the reviews, I see that my initial distaste for the machine stems from the same myopia currently gripping American politics.

Since I live in an apartment with a stove and own a frying pan, coffeemaker and a toaster, I don’t have a need for this. But there are plenty of people living in trailers without these amenities, or looking to outfit their campers. These folks have a need for the machine, do not mind that you can’t toast and grill at the same time and are completely happy with their purchase.

Yes, the machine makes no sense for an already-outfitted conventional kitchen. So you might wonder why it’s not being marketed specifically towards folks that live in trailers. I imagine it’s because of the stigma.

In the future I’ll be looking out for more products that address sizable but largely invisible subsets of the population. If you know of any, please drop a line in the comments.