What’s new in gadgets

Quit laughing. They could have called the magazine Stuff That Mostly Plugs In. Creativity is not the strong suit of this new quarterly, which has the dull feel of a trade magazine. Lots of manufacturers’ handout photos run with breathless product blurbs that beg for translation: “hidden bake-element range”? “Dual-blending hoppers”?

Those lost in a sea of stainless steel at Best Buy will forgive the magazine the hyperbole. Inserted in and around sleepy features on dishwashers or the surge in small appliances are the magazine’s true calling: page after page of new products. Jenn-Air mixers with art-glass bowls. The “world’s first Microwave Drawer” which pulls out from under a stove top. A refrigerator with a Gauguin reproduction splashed across the front. Even the tame headline “82 Refrigerators & Wine Coolers” on the second cover (summer 2004) can tantalize the right audience.

You’d have to save a month of Sunday advertising circulars to gather a fraction of the new product information in a single issue of this magazine. It just needs to distance itself from the manufacturers, loosen up and have a little more fun.

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Valerie J. Nelson