Remember the delicious schadenfreude we all enjoyed in 2017 at the expense of the Juicero company? Their market-disrupting innovation, you will recall, was a subscription to fruit juices enclosed in proprietary packets, which could be gracefully extracted by their high-tech $400 machine. One enterprising soul — history does not record their name — came up with the equally innovative idea of squeezing the packet with their hands, thereby obviating the need for the high-tech $400 machine, and depriving Juicero of nutritious and much-needed capital. They folded.

Juicero wasn’t the first to be burned by kitchen overreach, I learned recently at ‘Fresh Until,’ an exhibit at the Museum of Fairbanks Food Sciences in the heart of dairy country in Fairbanks, Alaska. Shown first are the countertop and handheld versions of the Fresh Topp opener (fig. 1), designed to open a patented aluminum can that found few takers among manufacturers. Second is an opener for the ‘T-seal’ fastener (fig. 2) invented by the Michigan Paper Packaging Company, an early vacuum seal closure for dry goods. But the third is my favorite, the Philco Snack-O-Matic (fig. 3), the product of a partnership between Great Plains Cereal Growers Association and the Philco radio company. Their two-part appliance consisted of a popcorn popper and an fm receiver, paired wirelessly, which would listen for specially-timed high frequency signals during radio broadcasts, and ensure that a fresh batch of snacks was ready just in time for each sponsorship break. An ingenious way to keep listeners available to advertisers, perhaps, but also the perfect way of encouraging young children to engage with boiling oil. Thank goodness we have more responsible corporate citizens today, whose helpful home listening devices are so much safer, their implications so wholly understood.

Published January 8, 2023. Copyright © 2023 Jonathan Hoefler.