Weather, Traffic, and Toast: Multi-functional concepts gone wrong

When it comes to things that have more than one function, the Swiss have cornered the market with their legendary Swiss Army knives. Not only can you cut things with it, but you can also clean a fish or cut down a small tree. So you may rarely need to clean a fish or cut down a small tree, but never the less, these are handy things to have. It's not a bad integration of functions in one tool. Lately though, the Swiss have been getting a little flakey. They've been making Swiss Army knives with laser pointers and USB memory keys. You can argue that it's still handy, but it's starting to venture into the grey region of multi-functional silliness.

I say this because I had to buy a toaster this weekend. My old 2-slice toaster suffered a stroke, which left it only able to toast one side of both slices. It was amusing for a while, but a new toaster had to be purchased. My new toaster is multi-functional in that it's a toaster and a toaster oven. It has a switch where you can open of the top panel and drop bread inside. In the opposite setting, the top panel is closed and the side door opens to a small toaster oven. It's a great multi-function idea, and it hasn't set my kitchen on fire yet.

Another multi-function toaster that I saw was the toaster radio. That's right... it's a toaster and a radio, complete with metallic antennae. I saw this and realized that it was a terrible idea. The world has no need for a toaster with radio reception. Radios have already found their place with clock-radios and car-radios, such that toaster-radios are just plain silly.



The worst multi-function idea in my view is the internet-refrigerator. I don't know why your fridge has to have internet access. I'm sure it's innovative, but I don't see the point. Sitting in front of a computer is bad enough for promoting a sedentary lifestyle, but imagine surfing the web in front of a fridge full of food... It wouldn't be pretty.

I had a lot of examples of bad multi-function ideas, but I'm getting sleepy right now. If you can think of one that I forgot to mention, please post it in the comments. Good night!