What?
The Tomorrow’s Kitchen pineapple slicer (£6.99, lakeland.co.uk) is a corkscrew boring-blade topped with segmenting disc. Spiralises pineapple rings in the shell, before plunging the disc partitions them into octants.
Why?
No questions! Stop talking!
Well?
This pineapple slicer is made by Tomorrow’s Kitchen, which will apparently look a lot like 1975’s kitchen. Who needs to wedge pineapple in quantities that necessitate a specialist tool? It is functionally packaged to the point of Soviet utilitarianism, but I quite like that. It is an antidote to M&S’s Dervla Kirwan breathily telling me I’m not just eating honey, but rich heather honey with wildflower accents, stolen from Scottish bees so they can’t feed their babies. Shameful decadence.
The side of the box here – a space usually reserved for tasteful nonsense about brand heritage, or how much the company loves you – is blank apart from the following instruction: “ROTATE THE SLICER IN AND PULL OUT A STACK OF SLICES.” No picture, no punctuation, blocky font. Da, comrade; let us attempt. I cut the top off the pineapple (which feels like offering someone a spectacularly bad haircut or a good decapitation, depending). There is a choice of blades, which the handle easily clips on to. But they struggle to drill through the firm flesh. It takes for ever and is more stubborn still once I extract the sloppy rings and drive the disc down the shaft to divide them into wedges. It is very hard.
Tussling with a pineapple is an emasculating experience, especially if you don’t win. But eventually I do win – I do. What do I win? A wet counter, a plate of thin chunks, and one mostly wasted pineapple. Worst haircut ever. The wedges, uneven and inadequate, are unpresentable even at an ironic 70s party. The other side of the box says only: “SHELL REMAINS INTACT TO SERVE TROPICAL STYLE.” I start to imagine the world where Tomorrow’s Kitchen is in charge of everything, including holidays. I picture a sun lounger on a building site, and a thin pineapple drink. George Michael on a low stage nearby, singing: “Club Tropicana, drinks cost two month’s wages,” while a bouncer holds his family hostage. This rubbish slicer makes me appreciate what we have. Let us enjoy our pineapple and fragile democracy. Come back, Dervla! I was wrong, and I’m sorry.
Redeeming features?
In Russia, the pineapples stack you. (This gadget was actually designed in the Netherlands.)
Counter, drawer, back of the cupboard?
Behind an iron curtain, or underneath it. 1/5
