[egg cracks]
[Dan] Oh, look, Mr. Sneezy is already sneezing it out.
Boy, this is just what I wanna see in the morning.
I’m Dan and I’ve been designing kitchen gadgets
for 40 years.
I’m gonna test some breakfast gadgets
and see if I can find a way to make them better.
Could want some sort of half dome here.
Increasing the angle of this wall.
A little bit bigger head.
These are the products I’m going to test.
Bagel Guillotine Slicer, Mr. Sneezy Egg Separator,
the Never Soggy Cereal Bowl,
One Click Butter Stick Cutter, Masticating Slow Juicer.
[upbeat music]
Bagel Guillotine Slicer. [drum roll]
Its purpose in life is to quickly slice a bagel safely
and in one easy move.
Let’s see how effective it is.
We’ve got a New York-sized bagel
and I guess a Midwest-sized bagel slicer?
We’re a little stuck.
What do you think, give it a squeeze?
Boy, it’s not going willingly.
Okay. It is squeezed in there.
Let’s see if we can turn this into two bagel halves.
And actually, it presses in pretty quickly and easily.
So that part of it was pretty easy.
Let’s see if I can pull out.
The slices want to come out, but that’s okay.
Kind of looks like a toaster.
And they are sliced pretty nicely
and the result’s pretty good.
The problem is the size may not fit every bagel you own.
Let’s assume you don’t have
a Bagel Guillotine Slicer at home.
Let’s compare it to a bread knife.
[upbeat music]
On a scale of one to five for effectiveness,
I would give the bagel guillotine slicer a four.
I would give it a five, but I’m from New York
and there’s no sense having a big bagel
if you have to squeeze it down to cut it.
Now I’m gonna try the left-handed oil test.
Making my non-dominant hand slippery is a quick way
to highlight any deficiencies.
And let’s remove the hood.
See how well this bagel squeezes in.
This one fits a little better.
Get on top, press down, it takes a little bit of force.
I may actually want to use both hands to do this.
But coming out, I’ve got a well-sliced bagel.
Not a whole lot of pinching or grabbing.
It really is just some downward force on this handle.
The handle’s pretty sizeable.
Just need to line it up and apply that pressure.
The bagel’s a little hard,
you may need both hands to get down on it,
but the blade actually is cutting pretty well.
And the shape of the blade, starting with this point
to get things started, is pretty effective.
So yeah, I think it’s working.
In terms of usability on a one to five scale,
I would give it a four.
Again, it loses a point cause I’m from New York
and we have oversized bagels here,
which would have to be squeezed down.
Let’s think about a redesign.
See if I have any thoughts on how to improve this.
So I’ll trace pretty quickly.
I think I’d question whether this handle up top
wants to be rounded like this.
I mean, have this arc to it, as opposed to being flat
or even having a small arc in the other direction.
That would keep hands centered as you do this.
My biggest complaint is it’s not easy to pick up
because there’s nothing holding the top to the bottom.
So if you’re gonna store it somewhere or put it on a shelf
and grab it off of a shelf, especially a high shelf,
I think it’s just gonna fall apart.
If this is the base, I think what I would do
is flare out the base a bit
so that fingers have somewhere to go.
Just give it a little more surface area.
And that, in addition to magnets on this end and this end
and in the base, strong enough just to hold this
so that when you pick it up the two halves stay together,
I think that would be an improvement.
Well, I guess the one other thing
is to make this more of a New York bagel size.
Come up with a shape in here, or maybe some,
a fence or something that would accommodate
different-sized bagels, but be a little bit larger
so that it would fit a New York-sized bagel,
which means a real bagel.
So in terms of a buy rating, I would give this a 4.5.
I am willing to forgive the fact
that it doesn’t quite fit a New York bagel.
Good job, Bagel Guillotine Cutter.
Mister Sneezy Egg Separator. [drum roll]
It is a rather disgusting way
to separate the yolk from the white of the egg.
Let’s give it a shot.
Egg number one.
Into Mr. Sneezy.
Got a little bit of a shell in there,
but we’ll just go with it.
And I’ll try the second one.
Oh, look, Mr. Sneezy is already sneezing it out.
Let’s say you have a cholesterol problem
and you never want to eat eggs again.
I would suggest Mr. Sneezy because I can’t think
of anything I would rather not eat at this point.
I still have some egg white inside of Mr. Sneezy’s head.
Oh, there it goes.
You got to jockey the egg yolks around a little bit.
And I think let’s see how much egg white
is left in the bowl.
Not too bad. It’s mostly yolk.
On the other hand, I don’t think I’m gonna eat eggs
for another week and a half.
Let’s compare Mister Sneezy
with the traditional eggshell method.
[upbeat music]
In terms of effectiveness, I would give Mr. Sneezy
a four and a half.
He is disgusting but effective.
It’s time for the left-handed oil test.
There’s not a whole lot of work or pressure
involved in doing this.
Still have to crack an egg with my left hand.
Oh, Mr. Sneezy is already dribbling.
Come on, Mr. Sneezy.
Well, boy, there’s no pressure involved
and the curves are okay.
It’s not like it’s gonna slip out.
There’s enough flare at the top of his head
that I don’t feel insecure at all
about using a slippery left hand on Mr. Sneezy.
I’m gonna give it a little bit of assistance here.
In the interest of time,
I’m just gonna stop there and see what we have.
Not bad separation between the egg whites and the yolks.
In terms of usability, I would give Mr. Sneezy a four.
It’s a lot of entertainment value.
Let’s talk redesign of Mr. Sneezy.
I know what you’re thinking.
How can you possibly improve on Mr. Sneezy?
I’m not sure how I can.
I think the one thing I would recommend,
Mr. Sneezy has to have a little bit bigger head.
I think it needs to be redesigned so that it could hold
two jumbo-size eggs so that he doesn’t
start dribbling out his nose immediately.
Aside from that, I got to say,
Mr. Sneezy, I think you’re almost perfect.
Thank you, Dan. [Dan sniffing]
In terms of a buy rating for Mr. Sneezy,
I would give him a five out of five.
Now, in saying that,
I would give Mr. Sneezy away as a present.
I’m not really sure I want to see Mr. Sneezy every morning.
If you were a kid and grew up with Mr. Sneezy
in your kitchen, I don’t think you’d forget it.
Never Soggy Cereal Bowl.
Its purpose in life is to keep the milk
and the cereal separated until you’re ready to eat it
to prevent unwanted sogginess.
So here’s what we have.
Cereal compartment, milk compartment,
route for the cereal to fall into the milk.
We have cornflakes.
[Dan tapping jar on bowl]
And I’m gonna pour in the milk.
Now the question is do the bananas go in the cereal part
or do they go in the milk part?
This is a question that everyone really needs
to answer for themselves.
Now, of course, bananas are waterproof,
so they really don’t need to be up here.
And time for the cereal to enter the milk.
And boy, if I’m really gonna be careful about sogginess,
I’m just gonna do a little bit at a time.
And it’s definitely crunchy.
It’s only been in there for about 30 seconds,
so it should be crunchy.
I’ve never experimented to see how much time
it actually takes for cornflakes to get soggy.
But I think if you own this, what you would want to do
is gradually introduce the flakes into the milk.
I’m holding this.
There’s actually a rather easy way to hold this
if you wanted to walk around your kitchen
or your house eating cereal.
[Dan eating cereal]
As you can see, it’s pretty easy to walk around with it.
Not only is it stable in my hand, but it’s deep enough
that I feel like it’s not gonna spill
as I walk around with it.
Boy, the only complaint I would have
is do I like soggy cereal?
And I actually like soggy cereal.
Let’s compare that to the more controversial method
of pouring cereal into the milk a little bit at a time.
[upbeat music]
That worked.
In terms of effectiveness,
I would give it a five out of five.
It separates the cereal from the milk
and that’s not rocket science,
but it does so pretty effectively.
Let’s test its usability.
I will oil things up.
Carefully pour in the cereal.
Some of it’s slipping out. It’s okay.
I will live with that.
I’ll pour in the milk.
And really what it comes down to:
is there any advantage to using my left hand
to scoop in the corn flakes?
Oh, let me put in a couple of bananas.
Again, bananas on top.
Sorry. That’s the way I was raised.
Okay, now left-handed, what that means is you probably,
if you want to hold the bowl by hand,
you’re gonna hold it in your right hand.
So it really is a two-handed operation.
There really is no disadvantage
to using this left-handed or right-handed.
You’re really just holding the spoon.
There’s no force involved.
I’m gonna switch hands.
Let’s say I’m holding the bowl itself
with this slippery left hand.
Still, it’s pretty stable in your hand.
And I don’t think there’s any disadvantage
to your right hand or your left hand
or a slippery hand.
Actually, probably be more secure
than holding a standard ceramic bowl.
In terms of usability, I would give this a five out of five.
It really is just a bowl.
It’s hard to say that it’s a difficult thing to use.
Let’s talk about a redesign.
If you look at this angle,
the front of the bowl curves down
so it’s a little bit shallower here.
That’s where the liquid is and the milk is.
But you notice in addition to that,
this wall is rather straight and this wall is rather curved
and maybe a little bit more spillable on the front.
I would think about maybe increasing the angle of this wall
so that the milk isn’t as likely to spill out,
especially since this shape encourages you
to walk around with it.
If this is the level of milk,
there may be just a little bit of headroom there,
and if it starts sloshing,
it may be more likely to spill.
In terms of a buy rating
I would give the Never Soggy Cereal Bowl,
I’d give it a five out of five.
It does have some sort of playful aspect to it
and I’m not gonna lie, it’s hard to critique a bowl.
One Click Butter Stick Cutter. [drum roll]
Your purpose in life is to pass butter.
Now I know from looking at the instructions
how to load this because it’s not self-evident.
This top pops off, but more importantly,
there’s a piece in here that needs to be shaken out
that doesn’t easily want to come out,
but it’s this piece, which is the butter pusher.
I will load a stick of butter, drop it in,
replace that cube.
I’ll put the top back on and let’s put it to the test.
Some pancakes. I will give it a squeeze.
Whoa! It’s standing on edge.
It’s not as easy to squeeze
because it’s got some sharp corners here.
It’s not very hand-friendly.
It took a little bit of effort to squeeze it.
This butter is just a little bit cold.
It’s not super hard. Let’s give it another squeeze.
[Dan clicking slicer]
Well, in that one, I’ve got a butter slice
that refused to come out, naturally.
Let’s try a third one.
So I’m squeezing.
So what’s actually happening inside is there is a blade.
When you push it, the white piece that I showed you
pushes the butter down and as it comes down,
it will slice off the butter.
And in many cases, as you can see, it’ll stick,
so you may actually have to persuade it to come off.
Notice too, that the thickness of the slices
seems to be inconsistent.
Let’s compare it to a butter knife.
[upbeat music]
In terms of effectiveness, I give it a one
because it is large and difficult to use.
It’s not very versatile compared to a butter knife.
Let’s try this again using the left-handed oil test.
Boy, I could see my problem right now
is getting this off is a little tricky with a slippery hand.
I’m gonna turn this upside down, and again,
I know that I have to rap it on the table a few times.
Okay. It is finally out.
Now let’s get that new stick of butter in.
Going to replace this part.
And it’s a little tricky, but I got it.
And again, we’re good to go.
Let’s give it a squeeze.
Whoop. It takes some force to do that, but it’s out.
It also creates this little divot in the pat of butter.
I don’t know if that offends
anyone’s aesthetic sensibilities.
Yeah, so I’m not the biggest fan,
right-handed or left-handed.
In terms of usability, I would give it a two.
I guess it works mechanically.
Let’s go down to one and a half.
There’s so much work involved in loading it
and there’s gonna be so much work involved in cleaning it.
Let me drop down that down to a one
because really a butter knife is so much more effective.
They’re solving a problem that was never a problem.
Okay, let’s think about a redesign and boy,
this is a tough one, ’cause I’m not really sure
this product has a reason to exist.
The reason it’s so big is because the stick of butter
that’s in here is here.
The butter itself is not blue,
but yellow is not gonna show up that well.
And the way this operates, the knife is somewhere down here.
And so in order to slice this, the entire stick of butter
needs to move here, which means you already have something
that’s almost twice the size of a stick of butter,
not to mention the size of the thing that’s pushing,
and the space you need for the blade below.
So it’s rather large.
I would rethink this to the point
where maybe the butter lies flat.
Let’s use some blue butter again
and we’ll need some sort of spring pusher here
because we want the butter to move forward with every click.
So whatever mechanism is helping it doing that,
we’d have to repeat here.
I would opt for this being just about the size
of a stick of butter and having some sort
of plunger mechanism here that would maybe be
like a mushroom cap or something
that you would press down on
so it would be stable on the table.
You would press down one hand or two hand,
the butter would come out this way.
You could pick it up and hold it over pancakes
or wherever you want to apply the butter.
That said, a butter knife works pretty well,
so even this would be tough competition.
In terms of a buy rating
for the One Click Butter Stick Cutter,
I got to give this a zero.
I can not think of one person I know
that I would recommend this to.
It doesn’t save space. It doesn’t do nothing.
Masticating Slow Juicer.
Its purpose in life is to make juice
out of fruits and vegetables.
Let’s see how effective it is.
Now, pull down this lever.
Didn’t suction at all that time.
Okay, it’s not gonna be very effective on a wooden base.
This part unscrews.
[plastic pieces clanking around]
And so what’s inside is this very, like, spacey-looking part
that is going to do the masticating.
The mesh on the bottom is where the juice
will be coming out, and this front nozzle
is where the pulp will be expended.
I think I’ll start with kiwi,
which I’m pretty sure is gonna be relatively easy.
I will start masticating. Crank, crank, crank.
Okay, now I’m pressing pretty hard with the plunger
’cause I need to get the kiwi out.
And I don’t know, does kiwi have pulp?
Kiwi has pulp; that’s what it looks like.
When they say it’s a slow juicer,
I can totally understand what they mean.
I think at this point I would have just eaten the kiwi.
Let’s try some cucumbers. Start grinding.
Sounds like something is happening.
But since they’re both green, it’s a little hard to tell
the cucumber juice from the kiwi juice,
but I think what we’re getting out now is cucumber juice.
Let’s try some apple slices.
You would think I’d get a lot more juice
now that I’m squeezing an apple.
And that may be the case.
It’s a very slow juicer. It’s a very slow process.
So I am getting into the apple,
but just slowly, slowly, slowly.
Let me shove in a handful of spinach.
As advertised, this would be good for spinach,
kale, or other leafy greens.
Let’s see how it does on those.
Hmm, I gotta say, not much better.
At this point I’m wondering
did the people who designed this ever try using it?
I did get a bit of juice, but man, that took a lot of work.
Let’s see how this compares to an electric juicer.
[upbeat music]
So electric versus hand crank, you get the idea.
Electric seems a lot quicker.
In terms of effectiveness, I would give this a one.
I’m just not a fan.
It takes so long and so much pressure.
Let’s try this again left-handed. I’m going to oil up.
I’m gonna throw in a few things at once.
I’m gonna throw in two slices of kiwi,
cucumber, a slice of apple.
This time though, I’m gonna push down with my right hand.
This is really the hand that’s doing the work.
It’s extracting juice at just about the same rate
that it did before.
But you know, left-handed,
I’m not having any trouble cranking.
Right-handed I’m still applying a whole lot of pressure
with not a whole lot of results.
In terms of usability, I would give this a zero.
It takes so much work and so much effort
to get the minimal amount of juice out of a kiwi,
which is relatively easy to juice.
In terms of a redesign, boy, this is gonna be a tough one.
So one thing I noticed right off the bat
is pushing this suction cup down.
Even if it was a surface that would accept the suction cup,
something smooth like a granite surface,
this lever is really difficult to operate.
I would both extend this lever so it’s a little bit longer,
you have more leverage, more mechanical advantage on it.
And then I would give it a shape
so that your hand or fingers
are not as likely to slip off of it.
The main issue with this that I’m seeing
is that this part is not masticating
the way you would want it to.
It’s got tiny little teeth here.
Those seem to be ineffective and proved to be ineffective.
So once you get these bits or chunks of kiwi or apple
to ride along here, there are some juicy chunks
that are just gonna end up being ejected.
So here is the tooth, which is actually
a three-dimensional diamond shape, right?
Kind of looks like that.
But it’s only moving in one direction,
so there’s no reason for this to be symmetric, right?
If it’s moving in one direction,
you would think it would want to do
some sort of scooping in that direction.
So you think we’d want some sort of half dome here,
which would pulverize the fruit or the vegetable
that you’re trying to turn into juice.
Secondly, I would take these tiny teeth.
They’re probably about that size.
I would think these things
would be much more sizeable, right?
They really need to carve into that pulp.
Boy, I guess one other thing,
I have to look inside to what actually is happening here,
but you would think here at the very end,
and there’s actually some shape to this,
which I don’t think is doing any favors,
but this is where if the pulp finally ends up here,
this is where it wants to be squeezed.
I would make sure that somewhere along here
having a squeeze action here,
so these ribs really need to do some squeezing,
because you want to, at this point, turn it into juice.
For a buy rating,
I would give the Masticating Slow Juicer a zero.
I cannot think of anyone I would recommend this to.
Just make a salad.
So if you’re making breakfast at home,
it really needs to be pretty seamless.
You’re probably groggy, still half-asleep,
when you’re doing it,
especially if you have to get out early.
We had some winners today. We had some losers.
They were all fun to review.
Some of them, I think,
had a little bit of overthinking to them.
Some of them had a little bit of under-thinking.
In general, it was a pretty good collection of products.
[gentle music]
