It’s really too easy to make fun of idiotic and overpriced items available for sale in places like Hammacher Schlemmer, Skymall, Brookstone, infomercials and even the more distant and strange corners of Amazon. Yet sometimes there’s a product so baffling that we have to feature it anyway. The Beer Glass Froster for home use is one of those products.

It costs $400. For that, you get the unit, which attaches to your counter and waits until you’re ready for a nice drink from your shelf of rare microbrews. The froster “emits a frosty cloud that converts a typical, room temperature beer glass into an ice-cold mug in seconds.” Sounds impressive. It can also chill a margarita glass or even an entire beer stein.

What that $400 does not get you are the carbon dioxide cartridges that you need to make the blasts of cold air, or the AA batteries that power the whole operation.

Back in the early ’80s, things weren’t this way. You could get something similar for a much more reasonable price: only $8.88. The downside: well, it was an infomercial product from Ronco, and it used a chlorofluorocarbon instead of carbon dioxide. You know, those substances that were later demonized for causing the hole in Earth’s ozone layer.

Frosty beer mugs, or ozone? Hmm.

The Beer Glass Froster. [Hammacher Schlemmer] (via Foodbeast)

 

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