It’s interesting how a period vibe and historical fact don’t always match, like the fact that Tiffany was a common girl’s name in medieval times. I’m Jason Toon and in this Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about consumer culture, we look at a current appliance that seems like a historical relic, but isn’t - at least, not quite the way it’s presented.
The dream of a fully automated breakfast dies hard. The time of day we most crave a hearty, nourishing meal coincides with the moment we least feel like doing the work to make one. From Wallace & Gromit to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure to Back to the Future III, no other meal has been the subject of so many convoluted contraptions. The next best thing - one appliance you can use to simultaneously brew your coffee, toast your toast, and fry your bacon and eggs - is currently marketed as a “nostalgic”, “retro” throwback to the 1950s. But when I looked into the story behind it, it turns out it’s a lot newer than that. Not like IkeWith its midcentury curves and colors - not to mention its brand name - the Nostalgia Classic Retro 3-in-1 Breakfast Station is clearly positioned as a replica of a 1950s appliance. It combines a toaster, a griddle, and a coffee maker into one compact countertop unit, sheathed in aqua with rounded corners. Retro kitchen appliances have grown in popularity over the last couple of decades, with big brands like Smeg and Frigidaire releasing lines of fridges and stoves heavy on the Jet Age styling. The sub-subcategory of all-in-one breakfast stations has expanded to the point that Good Housekeeping tested 8 different models in 2023, “cooking more than two dozen eggs and toasting nearly 20 pieces of bread and even frying bacon, brewing coffee and even making a few breakfast sandwiches.” All of their top three picks share that retro aesthetic. A combo breakfast machine certainly seems like it could’ve been a bygone ‘50s thing. It was the era of more convenient living through (over?) engineering, not to mention weird mashups of appliances: refrigerator with a built-in radio, anyone? The postwar/baby boom housing pinch also inspired a lot of space-saving household designs. It would have made a certain sense.
The problem is, I couldn’t find any evidence anything like this breakfast machine was ever mass-produced in the 1950s. Catalogs, print ads, newspaper archives, auction sites: none of them turn up anything even close to an actual vintage breakfast station. “Does everything except eat the breakfast”No doubt, some people had ideas for something like this. A 1933 Reuters story datelined Prague reported “A ‘breakfast machine,’ which it is claimed will do everything except eat the breakfast it has prepared, is being advertised by a firm here. The machine can be set to a certain time in the morning.” It even promised to ring a bell to summon the family to the table. Whatever this was, it never made it to market. I found some creepy AI videos (but I repeat myself) talking about an automatic breakfast machine prototype from the 1950s, allegedly called the Bendix ABM-1. That video refers to magazine coverage at the time, which I was unable to pin down further. Whether that’s real or not, I’m sure a multi-function breakfast maker was an idea that crossed R&D minds at the height of the postwar industrial boom. And I’m equally sure none of those ideas ever made it to market. Which means nobody could have “nostalgia” for them, or consider them “classics” - at least, not in their ‘50s form. The current retro designs are throwbacks to something that never existed. Doesn’t mean they can’t be well-designed or useful, just that they weren’t actually around in the ‘50s. But - in one last twist to the story - I found out breakfast stations are actually more than 30 years old, so they’re getting into the vintage category for real. ‘90s vintage, not ‘50s, but still, they’re not brand new. And the source for those struck unexpectedly close to home. Hammacher & EggsHammacher Schlemmer has been in business since 1848, but really caught the public imagination from the 1930s onward for its mail-order catalog full of innovations and oddities. Some of them were highly useful and became household staples: the first pop-up toaster, Mr. Coffee, the first steam iron, the first answering machine. Others live on in legend for their sheer whimsy, like an automatic sushi roller, a futuristic ‘80s vehicle called the “Tri-Ped”, an enigmatic oracle called the Nothing Box. It pioneered a retail genre that would include The Sharper Image and Brookstone.
The Wake Up to Breakfast machine appeared in Hammacher’s pages in 1994, complete with drip coffeemaker, toaster, and an “egg preparer [that] uses stainless steel cutters to slice the bottoms off two eggs, letting the contents drop, shell-free, onto the mini-frying pan’s non-stick cooking surface,” as a Gannett news story put it. Hammacher’s breakfast station included a timer and promised to have the entire breakfast done in 10 minutes. How much would it set you back to Wake Up to Breakfast? $400 in 1994 dollars, about $885 today. As you may know, Hammacher Schlemmer has recently joined Stores.com, which Meh, sponsor of this newsletter, is also part of. My “day job” has involved a lot of working on Hammacher, digging through whatever archives I can find, connecting what we do there today with its 168-year-history. And even I had no idea, when I started this story, that it would lead right back to us. So the “retro” breakfast stations of today don’t actually have roots in the 1950s kitchen. But in a weird way, they’re connected to a historical legacy that goes back even further, one that even the current stewards of Hammacher Schlemmer are still learning. Whatever their provenance, the all-in-one breakfast machine looks set to get more popular, as more and more American adults live alone, increasingly in smaller homes and apartments. As for me, I’m still holding out for this one:
I go through breakfast phases, and right now I’m squarely in the “no breakfast at all” version, but if I had a robot to make me a couple fried eggs, toast and hashbrowns I would definitely do that. What’s your breakfast routine, and how’s it changed over the years? Let’s talk in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat. —Dave (and the rest of Meh) Catch up on all the latest nostalgia with these previous Shoddy Goods stories:
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