Transformers: International Home + Housewares Show, 2015

Transformers: International Home + Housewares Show, 2015

Every year, I go to the International Home + Housewares Show with one purpose in mind: to find the most unusual stuff and report about it

Week before last, I went to the International Home + Housewares Show, 2015 at McCormick Place and saw a lot of stuff, some quite pedestrian, some puzzling, some kind of cool…or at least unusual. Last year, the theme was “The Internet of Everything.” But the internet now seems so last year. This year, the subtext of many products seemed to be “Transformers.”

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BEer Transformer. This product comes in a spray bottle. You spray the product into a relatively flavorless beer like Miller Lite and voila: the bland beer is transformed into a wheat beer, stout or ale, according to the user’s preference. I tried the wheat beer and the stout, and I must say that the transformed beer tasted better than the Lite beer – indeed, a World’s Tallest Midget scenario. I had a hard time imagining how one might use this product. I mean, why not just buy a wheat beer, stout or ale instead of a Miller Lite? I was told that this product is for parties: for instance, the host would buy a case of Miller Light, and then guests would be invited to transform their light beers into whatever style of beer they wanted. They could even mix a wheat beer with a stout! Oh, okay. I get it…I guess.



Boom Box Cooler. Optimus Prime is a military leader and a fire truck. This product is a boom box and a cooler. You charge up your boom box cooler before heading to the beach, and you can keep your brews cold while chilling to tunes. There’s a microphone slot so that you can do karaoke in the sand. If you want, hook up your phone to the cooler and recharge it while you check out the babes grooving to your masterful covers of 80s pop hits. Retail cost is only about $250, but one has to believe that such a product has a very select audience (I’m guessing college age males who like to hang at the beach and have more than average disposable income).



Robotic Pancake Maker. You know how on some Sunday mornings when dad is making pancakes, and the kids ask for a pancake in the shape of Mickey Mouse, a race car, an astronaut, whatever. Well, with this robotic pancake maker, you can program a machine to lay down just the right consistency and color of pancake dough, in just the right order. The unit comes with an SD card filled with images that you can transform into pancakes. Bon appetite!



George Foreman Evolve. Now this is a cool product, particularly for those who may have a small kitchen. It’s a George Foreman clam-shell grill, which you can use to grill burgers and so on, but – and here’s the evolution/transformation part – it comes with waffle attachments, a muffin pan, and other add-ons that enable you to use your basic grill as mini-oven. My daughter is moving to Thailand to teach, and if we can get a suitable power converter, something like this would be perfect for her little apartment.

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...... Optimus Prime is typically a transport truck, and originally a freightliner COE ...

JK! Thanks for the interesting read.

mike

The Pancakebot is on Kickstarter and has exceeded its funding goal (and the early-bird half-price deals are all sold out). Apparently, there's a market for it (with the ultimate question being how large?).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/18 ... ke-printer

It can join the CocoJet chocolate 3D printer:

http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/06/the- ... chocolate/

and the 3D sugar printer:

http://the-sugar-lab.com/ChefJet

in the 21st-Century unused gadget pantry.

Mikelipino wrote:...
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...... Optimus Prime is typically a transport truck, and originally a freightliner COE ...

JK! Thanks for the interesting read.

mike

I definitely don't claim to be Transformers authority, but in at least one of his incarnations/transformations, OP is a fire truck: