Tuesday, November 4, 2008

I has a hot dog (cooker)

Hot dog cookers - who knew? Most people have seen this little number by now:














Completely appropriate for this blog, it is designed solely to cook two hot dogs and two buns. Granted, if you eat hot dogs everyday, and nothing else ever, this really would be a lifesaver. You wouldn't live long enough to really appreciate it that much, but it would make your life better while your arteries harden.

I never would have guessed that there would be an even more useless single-use appliance than the hot dog cooker but I didn't count on there being other more useless hot dog cookers. Behold:















While this gizmo has a more child-friendly "design" (to use the word loosely) and does have a capacity somewhere north of two, it has no place for the buns. To my mind the one thing about hot dog cooker classic is that at least it toasts the buns. That's not nearly enough to tip the scales and persuade me to buy one but it's nice. The ability to do more than two dogs at once should be enticing but I wonder at what point it just makes more sense to fill a pot with water or fire up the grill.

The doggie hot dog cooker barks when the hot dogs are cooked. Cute feature or irritating feature?


Now, if you operate a convenience store or a concession at the ballpark, you're going to want one of these:














Kind of a no-brainer, right? Exactly the type of situation that calls for a single use appliance. But what if you felt that cooking hot dogs on hot rollers was so good you wanted to do it at home? Well, for only $60 you can own this:
















That's right, for $60 you can cook up to eight (eight!) hot dogs at once. Or four foot longs. Of course it's such a versatile thing you can do so many other things with it. For instance...um, well you can also cook bratwurst on it.

What happens if you want something to cook your hot dogs but occasionally want to have some popcorn or a boiled egg? Glad you asked!













While this is no longer available from the manufacturer, I'm sure you could score one on eBay for a very reasonable price.


What about a hot dog cooker for the environmentally aware? We have nothing less than the solar powered hot dog cooker.













What if you're camping and need to cook several over the fire all at once? As long as you're OK with something not actually meant to cook food (meaning it's probably going to poison you) then please enjoy the redneck version of a hot dog cooker:















Of course, if ever you needed to buy something with only one use then at least consider something with a sense of humor:











Bonus points if the humor is also somewhat cringe inducing.












Now, it's easy to assume that all the hot dog cookery junk is a sign that our modern culture is running amok with vapid consumerism (and it does seem to be an easy case to make) but the sad reality is that this has been with us for over half a century!


From a 1950 edition of Popular Science:




American ingenuity. Sometimes we soar, sometimes we invent things to cook hot dogs.
Again I say: Hot dog cookers - who knew?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

More of our appliances should bark.

bluemarla said...

In the show How I Met Your Mother, Barney loves the Sky Mall catalog. He has a hot dog cooker in his office.

David said...

I remember that episode but not the hot dog cooker specifically.

Ah, the Sky Mall catalog. If I ever run dry of new material I always have Sky Mall.