The Egg Wave - The Yolk's On Me!
Written: Jan 02 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: uh, there are pros?
Cons: flimsy construction, hard to use, ineffective
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| pluckyduck's Full Review: egg wave |
New Years Day, 8:00 AM
It's the morning of New Year's Day, the first day of a new millennium. I awaken a bit later than usual, log on to check my email and Epinion stats, and start the coffee brewing. Humming to myself, I decide it's a great morning for a little homemade breakfast and some meaningful interaction with the kids who will be going back to the school grind the following day. I pull the orange juice out of the fridge, and call the children, asking them what they'd like to make for breakfast this AM. A pleasant holiday morning. Life is good.
45 minutes later
My new Gap PJs are covered in egg yolk, My six-year-old is looking forlornly at an empty egg carton, pleading with me to go out to the store to buy another dozen so we can try "one more time". My older son lost interest in whatever we were doing 25 minutes earlier and has broken into the Grinch Poptarts. My husband never was interested in our breakfast in the first place; he's already off to the diner to eat with his buddies. The dog, tired of eating egg experiment rejects, is carrying egg chunks into the living room to bury in the sofa as a treat for later.
Two Weeks Earlier
Something, that day, possesses me to buy an As Seen on TV Egg Wave. Looking for a few last minute Christmas presents, I come across the Egg Wave online and decide it would be cute for the kids to give it to Mom for Christmas. Perfectly Cooked Eggs In Seconds - In The Microwave!!
You would think that, at 39 years of age, I'd have more sense than to shell out $16.99 plus shipping for a miracle product hawked on the nether regions of television.
Wouldn't you?
28 Years Earlier
I'm 11 years old. My Mom has gone completely over the edge with The Buttoniere, a handy little As Seen on TV device she purchased to eliminate, forever, the bothersome task of sewing on buttons. Instead of thread-sewn buttons, I have buttons attached to my clothing with ever-so-attractive colorful plastic nibs (similar to the plastic that clothing manufacturers use for hangtags.) My mom has even thoughtfully replaced buttons on many of my clothes that didn't need replacing - just to take advantage of the decorative possibilities of colorful plastic nibs. My classmates are very envious of my "style" -- I just want to die and take all As Seen on TV products with me.
The Day After Christmas 2000
It's the first time that we open my Egg Wave box. My son Dan is running around the house playing with his new singing Woody doll and chattering imaginative stories to himself. My dear husband is playing with the kids' new Nintendo games and the dog is hiding all of our new socks in the sofa cushions.
Left to our own devices, Adam and I decide it's a good time to Egg Wave. I warn Adam that products bought from TV can be disappointing at times, and double warn him that any cooking done in the microwave can take some experimenting. Adam, my official Epinion Product Tester Assistant, pulls out some paper and a pen, and we're off to explore the wonderful world of Waving our Eggs.
Out of the Box Experience
Uh, experience? I guess you could call it that.
We open the box containing my $16.99 plus shipping Egg Wave and find a mish mosh of plastic pieces, the look and feel reminiscent of child's play kitchen utensils.
The box contains:
4 Egg shaped egg cookers (top and bottom)
4 Egg lifters (to be inserted in cookers)
4 Egg scrambling grates (to be inserted in cookers)
1 Egg caddy (in two pieces, needing to be assembled)
1 "bonus egg" separator
1 small instruction book (billed as a "recipe" book)
We dump everything on the counter to start.
Getting started
Getting started isn't complicated, just a little annoying. The cheap plastic Egg Caddy handle doesn't fit easily into the Egg Caddy, so I have to bang it a few times. We need to put the top and bottom of the Egg Cookers together, inserting the Egg Lifters first, etc. A few minutes though, and we're good to go.
Today, we decide, we'll be making soft cooked eggs. Soft cooked eggs were the main reason the product appealed to me. Adam and I are the only two in our family who like soft cooked eggs, and the product promised that soft cooked eggs could be made quickly and easily in the microwave. I liked the idea of being able to make just one egg for Adam, when he wanted it, without having to pull out a frying pan and make a big mess.
1 hour later, the day after Christmas 2000
1 hour and 8 eggs later - we have a winner!
Using the Egg Wave for soft or hard cooked eggs is supposed to be easy, but we had found the timing very tricky. The times in the "recipe" booklet weren't even close to accurate -- but how could they be since they had absolutely no information on microwave wattage listed? Microwave watts vary from 400 watts to over 1500 watts, making just a few seconds difference critical to success. We ended up just using trial and error to attempt to come up with "our" time for an egg that was just right for us.
Timing questions aside, using the Egg Wave was pretty cool. We liked the egg shaped Egg Cookers (reminiscent of the old time L'eggs pantyhose eggs), and we liked the neat, compact shape of the cooked eggs.
Adam's favorite part of the whole experience was when one of the Egg Cookers exploded in the microwave because we (apparently) didn't have the little top flap vent bent up high enough to let the steam escape. No matter because, by the end of our session, two of the flap vents have broken off entirely, leaving us to never worry about remembering to open them wide enough again.
Finally, on our eighth and last egg, we have managed to produce a cooked egg with a white that wasn't runny and a yolk that was runny enough to make a nice toast companion.
We record our exact cooking time (32 seconds, 1 egg). Adam sits down to eat and I contemplate cleaning the mess.
Hoo boy, is there mess. There are 12 plastic parts that have to be individually cleaned, all of which have cooked egg "glued" to them. While the product is advertised as "dishwasher safe", the parts are so small and so flimsy there is no way for me to put them through the dishwasher -- they would end up bouncing around and settling by the dishwasher's heating element, melted for all eternity.
Grumbling under my breath, I take 20 minutes and wash everything clean.
Back to New Years Day, 2000, 8:05 AM
For our home cooked breakfast today, Adam and I decide to make some scrambled eggs in the Egg Wave. We're doing this (mostly) for fun, since even my 6-year-old agrees that scrambled eggs for the family would be faster and easier in a frying pan on top of the stove.
We pull out the "scrambling grate" disks and insert them into the individual Egg Cookers as instructed. The premise is this: you just crack your egg right into the Egg Cooker. It passes through the scrambling grate. You put the top on the Egg Cooker, hold your finger over the vent and shake for 10 seconds. Voila' scrambled egg.
After a few minutes of assembly, I have the honor of "first crack". I crack the egg --- but the egg doesn't pass through the scrambling grate. It stops, and slides off the egg cooker, directly onto my new Gap PJs that my sister-in-law bought me for Christmas.
I have, right then and there, a good sense that the rest of breakfast is not going to go smoothly.
New Year's Day, 10:15 PM
I'm sitting in my office, typing an Epinion about one of the worst ways to ever spend $16.99 plus shipping. My Egg Wave is in a box, next to my computer, ready to be thrown into the trash the second this Epinion is posted.
One dozen eggs today, and we didn't get one edible scrambled egg out of the whole mess. We tried going back to soft cooked eggs, but the timing we had faithfully recorded last week didn't produce the same results this week. Runny, runny whites or hard cooked yellow. No in between.
The handle on the Egg Caddy has broken permanently. The Egg Wave pieces are unwashed from today's adventure as I had no reason to spend 20 minutes cleaning something that would shortly be shoved in the trash.
Don found a hunk of eggs in his side of the bed a few minutes ago and politely asked me to stop feeding the dog my cooking experiments. Apparently my dear husband is still in the spirit of the holidays, because he's usually not so nice when the dog hides my food on his side of the bed.
Trying to be a fair as possible to the product, I've sat and contemplated who, if anyone, could benefit from owning an Egg Wave, but come up stone dry. This is nothing but a hunk of junk and worse than a gimmick. At least my Mom's Buttoniere attached the buttons it promised to attach, even if it was the tackiest invention the 1970's brought forth.
Though I couldn't recommend anyone buying the Egg Wave, I'm secretly glad that I did. Adam and I had a ball cooking together, even if we only got one egg to eat out of the 20 we cooked. We ended up making the whole thing (explosions included) a mini-science lesson about how microwaves work, and a mini-consumer education lesson about how commercials can be deceptive.
And, it's been awfully fun writing this Epinion for you. Perhaps my Egg Wave wasn't a bargain at $16.99, but not a total waste either. Thanks for reading. If I decide to purchase the Hair Orgami As Seen on TV, I'll let you know how it goes.
If you'd like to see a picture of the Egg Wave, copy and paste
http://www.iworld.mb.ca/images2/egg_wave.jpg
into your browser.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
pluckyduck
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Member: Andrea Barton Gurney
Location: Almost Philadelphia
Reviews written: 74
Trusted by: 295 members
About Me:
Gone fishing for awhile.
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