When all of the other internet mega-corporations have their own smart speakers and home hubs, it’s understandable that Facebook would feel left out. It just wants to be like the cool kids: Amazon and Google have their products on the market and even Apple and Alibaba have plans to launch their own. Facebook is reportedly catching up. [More]
new and exciting products
Breakfast Cereals In Girl Scout Cookie Flavors Are Now A Thing
By 10.24.16
The Girl Scout Cookie marketing train runs year-round, even if the cookies themselves are only available for a limited period every year. The Scouts have been licensing their brand names and flavors for a while now, resulting in derivative products like licensed toy cookie ovens, lip balm, and licensed ice cream bars. Now they’ll be available as a licensed breakfast cereal from General Mills. [More]
Best Buy Wants Fresh New Crowdfunded Products For Its Shelves
By 9.26.16
Best Buy has managed to survive, defying the expectations of experts and shoppers, by creating themed mini-stores and price-matching its online competition. Now the company has a new idea: teaming up with companies that make popular crowdfunded products to get them on the shelves of Best Buy. [More]
Will This Biofeedback Sleep Hat Improve Your Slumber?
By 1.6.16
Nightcaps — as in hats that you wear while sleeping, not sipping booze before bedtime — have gone out of style with the spread of central heating, but maybe it didn’t have to be that way. For $150, an actual product that’s on the market promises to use biofeedback to monitor your brain waves and lull you to sleep, which is apparently a thing that people really want in a device. [More]
No One Asked For Oreo Churros Available At Home, Yet Here They Are
By 12.9.15
Just over a year ago, we learned that Oreo churros came into existence for some reason that no one fully understands. That version was for the convenience-store market: stores would serve the choco-churros with cups of “creme.” Now the product that you never asked for is available: Oreo churros have found their way to store shelves. [More]
Indiegogo And Brookstone To Team Up To Make Even More Cool, Useless Gadgets
By 11.16.15
In decades past, if you wanted to find gadgets that solve problems you never realized existed until just now, you had to leave your house and go to a Brookstone store, or send away for a catalog. Today, you can surf gadgets that are so fresh that they don’t really exist yet on crowdfunding sites, and Brookstone is teaming up with crowdfunding platform Indiegogo to give inventors logistical support, and perhaps improve Brookstone’s pipeline of fresh new ideas. [More]
Burger King Joins Nabisco Brand Party, Tries Chips Ahoy Milkshake
By 8.28.15
Fast-food and coffee chains want to serve up drinks and desserts that are flavored like chocolate chip cookies, but these aren’t just any old chocolate chip cookies. No, chains including Dunkin’ Donuts, Dairy Queen, and now Burger King are selling Chips Ahoy-branded items in their restaurants, a confusing bit of cross-branding. [More]
New Fast Food Item Ideas Are Born In Test Kitchens, In Franchises, And Everywhere Else
By 8.24.15
Back in 1972, McDonald’s only served two meals each day: lunch and dinner. It took one enterprising franchisee to invent the Egg McMuffin, and with it, the entire fast food breakfast sandwich industry. Yet there aren’t many new menu items that survive the testing phase in the fast food industry, and a variety of factors could stop a new item on its way to international greatness. [More]
FCC Approves iRobot Automatic Lawnmower
By 8.13.15
iRobot, maker of robots that vacuum your carpets and scrub your toilets, wants to bring this same technology to your lawn. The lawn? Yes, humanity might hand over yet another of our annoying chores to our robot pals. While automatic lawn mowers are nothing new, iRobot’s version is. Maybe they can popularize the devices, which haven’t really caught on in this country. [More]
Amazon Dash Buttons Are Finally Available To Everyone
By 7.29.15
Amazon just happened to announce their new ordering gadget, Dash buttons, on March 31, which earned them a lot of free publicity as people chattered about whether it was an April Fool’s Day prank or not. It had to be a joke, right? It was not. It was a real product that Amazon promised to make available in a few weeks. Now it’s sixteen weeks later, and there are eighteen different Dash buttons that you can order. [More]
The 10-Minute Jell-O Shot Machine Is Here
By 7.21.15
Jell-O shots are fun and delicious, but they have a serious disadvantage: they’re quick and easy to prepare, but require hours of lead time and a lot of fridge space while they congeal. This limits the potential for spontaneous boozing at your house party, but one entrepreneur realized that it also affects bar profits. His solution is a machine that cranks out a tray of Jell-O shots in five minutes. [More]
Entrepreneur Wants To Sell Un-Frozen Artisanal Ice Cubes
By 4.16.15
Last fall, we learned that artisanal ice cubes were an actual thing. Bars charge $1 extra for them, and they supposedly melt more slowly, leading to a less watery beverage experience and bragging rights. They cost about $1 per giant cube, and here’s the weird part: they ship unfrozen. [More]
Brach’s Introduces Easter Chick Shaped Candy Corn For Some Reason
By 3.5.15
Fear not, candy fans: Brach’s is now able to fill in the bleak waiting time between Valentine’s Day candy corn and Independence Day candy corn with Easter candy corn. Except they’re not “corn,” they’re candy corn chicks. We live in a world where this kind of thing is acceptable. [More]
Prairie Farms Introduces Peeps-Branded Marshmallow Milks And Easter Egg Nog
By 3.4.15
Last year, we brought you the news that Prairie Farms sells Easter-themed dairy beverages: specifically, jellybean milk and Easter egg nog. Now the company has partnered with Just Born, creators of Peeps marshmallow-shaped holiday treats, to sell Peep-flavored milk. Yes, that just means sugar, artificial flavors, and food coloring. That’s what Peeps are. [More]
Mint St. Patrick’s Day Milk Goes National With TruMoo
By 3.2.15
Do you enjoy drinking milk, but think that it simply isn’t green or sugary enough? Following in the deeply disturbing footsteps of orange milk and jellybean milk comes “mint vanilla” flavored milk from TruMoo, a brand that started as a low-fat version of chocolate milk. Why mint? The milk is green, for St. Patrick’s Day, so it’s mint-flavored. It’s like a melted Shamrock Shake. [More]
New Products: Girl Scout Cookie Ice Cream Bars, Taco Bell Sauce Packet Chips
By 2.25.15
This week, we learned about two exciting products from different food outlets. One is being test-marketed, and the other is in grocery and big-box stores across the land. What they have in common is taking a familiar and beloved product and translating it into a different but perfectly logical format. Those products? Girl Scout Thin Mints ice cream bars, and Taco Bell hot sauce tortilla chips. [More]
GE To Sell Refrigerator With Built-In Wi-Fi-Enabled Coffeemaker
By 1.15.15
A few years ago, the brilliant appliance designers over at GE and Samsung introduced refrigerators with water dispensers that could carbonate and heat water, right there in the fridge door. This idea didn’t really catch on. Now built-in small appliances are about to become even more specific with GE’s new idea for a thing to install in the refrigerator door: a Keurig single-serve coffee maker. [More]
Smart Sleep Number Bed For Kids Banishes Monsters With App
By 1.8.15
Smart appliances and Internet-connected household items are here on the market and on their way into our homes whether we like it or not, but here’s one unexpected smart product: a smart bed for children that serves as its own night light and banishes under-the-bed monsters using a smartphone app. [More]
