Dear boss:
Thanks again for allowing me the opportunity to cover the annual Housewares Show at McCormick Place, Sunday through Wednesday.
It`s not often I get to spend my day off traipsing through miles of carpet-covered concrete listening to dozens of babbling salesmen while checking out everything from cat toys to home potato-chip makers (West Bend`s Chip Factory, at about $333, slices, fries and drains potato chips).
This year the most innovative products and the best ideas seemed to be found in small, simple gadgets. Most of these items should be found in local stores by spring. For example:
– The Big Baby Co. of Nyack, N.Y., is showing a dishwasher-safe, freezable, polyethylene juice box with a large screw-on top, which holds a straw. Mom can fill the box with juice at night, stick it in the freezer and put it in junior`s lunch in the morning. By the time he`s ready for lunch, he`ll have cold juice at a savings of 12 to 31 cents a serving compared with commercial juice box products. Sip-Eze refillable juice boxes sell for $1.69 each.
– Capital Ideas, a Waukesha, Wis., company, is promoting plastic can caps called Top` Its that snap over aluminum soda and beer containers, allowing you to reseal them ($1.79 for a package of 2). The company also has a screw-on top for plastic water and pop bottles with a push-pull mouthpiece that allows single-handed drinking. It`s perfect for taking a sip with your left hand while typing away with your right. Called SportsCaps, they`ll go for two for $1.29 when they get on the market in March.
– Another slick idea is the Fresh Pour milk and juice spout from J.G. Bosco, Inc. of Petaluma, Calif. It`s nothing more than a piece of plastic tubing, tapered to a point on one end, that you screw into a waxed paper carton so you can pour the contents out cleanly and evenly. It`s $1.99.
– Jokari/US Inc. of Dallas, makes small plastic devices, including a Fizz-Keeper Pump Cap to keep the pressure in plastic soft drink bottles (about $2.50 to $3.) and a vacuum pump for wine bottles, called the Wine Air-Vac Pump Cap, to keep the air out and the wine fresh after the bottle has been opened
(about $6 or $7).
– The Soda Keeper, a combination pour handle and seal for large plastic soda bottles from Innovative Consumer Products of Highland Park, retails for $2.99 and lets you use the bottles like a pitcher.
– In the why-didn`t-I-think-of-that department, Kitchen Art of Florence, Ala., has designed an adjustable plastic measuring spoon that can mete out 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 or 1 teaspoon of a liquid or powder by moving a slide. It also comes in a tablespoon and 1/2-cup size. A teaspoon/tablespoon set is $4.95.
Chefs at work
This year there seemed to be less to eat at the show, as an estimated 40,000 marketers and buyers wandered through five floors of displays. Mostly it was air-cooked popcorn, french fries, candy and pizza. But there was a notable exception.
At the Farberware booth famous restaurant chefs demonstrated how to make great dishes using Farberware millenium cookware. On Sunday Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton, chef and owners of Campanile restaurant in Los Angeles and Sanford D`Amato, owner of Milwaukee`s Sanford restaurant were preparing fish dishes.
Also at the Farberware display chef/writer Pierre Franey took time out from signing copies of his book (with Bryan Miller) ”Cuisine Rapide” to celebrate his 71st birthday.
Here are a few other new kitchen items for more than $10:
– Riki Kane, owner of Metrokane in New York City, says she lies awake nights conjuring up new ideas. Looks like that insomnia pays off. This year she came up with the Pasta Bar, a set of four long acrylic tubes, each capable of holding a pound of pasta. They fit into a plastic rack for the counter or to mount on the wall. It sells for $35 and includes 4 pounds of gourmet pasta. She also makes an officially licensed U.S. Olympic Lunchbox Cooler-a
”portable `fridge” with a removable ice pack that snaps into the lid. Sealed tight, the box will keep your lunch cold for hours (about $23).
– You`ve seen those plastic freezer pouch sealing machines before, but the Deni Freshlock TurboSeal by Keystone Manufacturing Co. of Buffalo, N.Y., can create custom size bags with separately sealed chambers. It also vacuum seals. You can, for instance, seal cooked spaghetti and sauce in one bag with side by side sections. It makes great freeze pops or you can seal up packets of hardware parts or keepsakes or even magazines and comic books you want to preserve. Retail price is $89.95 with a 33-foot polyethylene roll.
– Recycling still is a common theme at almost any price.
West Bend Co. from West Bend, Wis., has an electric can crusher that can be used on a countertop or wall and will smash up to six cans in succession into little hockey puck-sized medallions. The West Bend Can Crusher is about $109.
Meanwhile, Sjoberg Industries of Mountain View, Calif., also has a can crushing machine called Recyclor 48, a kind of Terminator for cans, that will crush up to 48 of them before you have to empty it. Cost is $90.
If that`s more than you care to spend on garbage preparation, there`s the Beverage Container Cycler from JAWZ of Fallbrook, Calif., for about $15. Not only will the JAWZ unit mash aluminum cans, it also flattens plastic bottles, paper milk cartons and other recyclable stuff. You supply the leverage power via a long handle.
Last year the National Housewares Manufacturing Association set up color- coded recycling bins to collect plastics, metal and paper, but many show-goers paid little attention to which was which. This year actors dressed as recycling ”bins” entreated patrons to recycle, saying, ”I`m really hungry for some cans,” or singing, ”I`ll take your paper products, today.”
It was comic relief, but it did little to relieve sore feet.
Your faithful reporter, Steven Pratt
