1. This bathroom bin costs €607.50 (and that’s the sale price)
That’s a lot to splash out on something that will in the best case scenario become home to some used snotty tissues.
2. This €209 tea kettle
The idea of this Alessi kettle is to offer a pleasant alternative to the well known whistle that we must endure when the stove top kettle has successfully boiled.
Let’s just disregard the fact that the obvious solution to avoid hearing this whistle would be to buy a plug in kettle for a sec and go with it.
Curious as to what the pleasant alternative might sound like, I’ve done a little bit of Googling and found that it sounds like the combination of bagpipes and a child blowing into a harmonica.
If a regular kettle whistle is too harsh and shrill for your affluent ears, then fair enough, but for this price I would expect Mariah Carey herself to make an appearance in my kitchen and sing to me when the kettle’s boiled.
3. This €350 wine decanting system
Do you ever get those days where you come home from work and want one glass of wine, but don’t want to waste a whole bottle?
How about those days when you would pay €350.00 for the opportunity to harvest a glass of wine from the bottle via a thin needle without opening it and letting any oxygen into the bottle because you want to preserve it for many years to come?
I think that the best thing about this product is how it actually doesn’t even work without capsules of argon that you have to replace after every three bottles of wine that you open using it. They cost £21 for two on Amazon. You could not make this up.
What bottle of wine could ever possibly be worth the sheer amount of effort involved in this? Surely it would make more sense in 99% of situations to just let the wine go stale than to spend this much protecting the oxygen levels in the bottle.
4. These six napkins for €235
This works out at nearly €40 per napkin. I would never pay a dinner guest €40 to rub their dirty mouth all over my fine linen, but by purchasing this, that’s essentially what you are doing.
5. This table cloth for €450
You better hope nobody has any accidents with the Coravin wine decanter around this table cloth.
6. This €235 toaster
How good could the toast from this be to warrant this price? It can only cook four slices at a time too.
Oh, and if you’re wondering what the free gift with purchase is, it’s just something called a Sandwich Cage. I assume it does the same job as one of those toaster bags you can get in Dunnes.
7. This €220 clock
Of course it’s by Alessi, the people who brought you the kettle that sounds like a bagpipe.
8. This set of glasses for a modest €350
I’m sure friendships have been destroyed when guests accidentally chip or drop one of these little glasses.
9. A €125 condiment set
It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that Alessi are at it again. Described as “mini-architecture for the table”, this includes a bottle for oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.
10. A bucket for ice that costs €250
This isn’t even dishwasher safe, so keep it in mind that your dainty little millionaire hands must be prepared to wash at some stage. Unless of course you have a cleaner, who will most likely earn less in a day than you have dropped on this ridiculous piece of glass.
11. This €350 bread maker
This one is especially annoying. You’re going to really have to make a lot of bread for this to be worth the money you paid for it. It’s not like bread’s hard to come by. Lidl do lovely stuff in their bakery and there’s no waiting around for it.
Seriously. You’re going to have to have about 350 loaves of bread for this purchase to make any kind of sense.
12. This €140 device for holding your toothpicks
I swear to God if I have to type the word Alessi one more time on this piece I’m going to have some kind of breakdown. The designer of this product described it as one of his
objects with which we can establish relationships, not just of use and functionality but also of a psychological, symbolic, and poetic nature.
This is a toothpick holder. This holds little pieces of wood that you’re going to use to pick chewed up food out of your teeth. There’s no justifying it. The only psychological relationship this product could establish with me would be one of a deeply torturous nature.
13. These 8 wineglasses for €162
This works out as about €20 a glass. This is also the reduced price from €192. They would make an excellent accompaniment for your wine decanting system.
What’s so special about these glasses? They are created to “enhance the flavour of full bodied red wines with [their] innovative rim”.
Until I found these, I was personally really sick of the rim of every other wine glass hindering the flavour of my wine.
14. This gin serving set for €350
I’m 99% sure you could closely recreate this with IKEA products for €30, so if anyone’s seriously considering paying €350 for this, get in touch with me and I will make it for you for €100.
15. This cushion for €325
If I handed you €325 right now, I could pretty much guarantee that the last thing you would want to do with it would be buy this cushion. Yet, somewhere out there, there’s a person who picked this up and decided that it was a worthwhile thing to buy.
16. This all-purpose storage box for €145
Yes. It’s Alessi. Back at it again with a 32 x 24cm bamboo box. The product description (which has become synonymous to me as “desperate reach to justify a ridiculous product”) says that “the design nods to the structural simplicity of a house”. In other words, this is an empty house shaped box.
