The latest in kitchen multitasking, Dutch-style

(Credit: Marcel Wanders)

A few months ago, when I came across that gadget that prepares eggs, toast, and coffee for you, I rashly and wrongfully asserted that such "breakfast multitasking" was endemic to Japan. That was an erroneous assertion on my part: the Dutch are doing it too, except that this gadget really isn't specific to breakfast. Holland Electric has a fun little product designed by Marcel Wanders. Called the Wave TV, it combines a microwave with a 15" TV and DVD player. We've seen kitchen TVs before, but until this point they've been largely confined to fridges. And if you're wondering why there is a chicken in that picture of the Wave TV, Treehugger says that it's because designer Wanders puts animals into all of his product photos.

Here's an idea for the Wave TV: If you want to be artsy, you could pop in a DVD of nuclear weapon test videos and play it on a loop while nuking food. It's like, making a statement!

And for the record, last I checked, Japan no longer can claim to be the only country churning out oddball kitchen-multitasking devices, but they still appear to be the sole manufacturer of Pikachu-style snowplows and Hello Kitty USB lap warmers.