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Food

This Egg Stick Thing Is Giving Me an Existential Crisis

Whomst would invent such a thing? And so many other questions.
Girl eating egg on a stick
Screenshot via Twitter user @lisasaurstomp

A version of this article originally appeared on MUNCHIES Switzerland.

It’s midnight, just as I’m about to go to bed. I scroll casually one last time through my Twitter feed in search of nihilistic memes and bitchy rants that I can use to puzzle together the day’s events in the news. And then I see it: a video straight out of hell. Or, rather, the infomercial for a device that will, uh, roast you a skewered egg. It’s known as an “Egg-On-A-Stick.” I want to shriek in disgust.

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The next day, I’m still feeling terrible. The video of the stick-egg has slowly burned itself to my retinas overnight, drilling itself into my brain, corroding my heart and, above all, my stomach. Yet I keep hitting play; I can’t avert my eyes. I repeatedly watch as the egg log is slowly pressed out of the device. For the thirteenth time (!!!) now, I’ve watched a blond girl take a bite out of the Egg-On-A-Stick, a warm smile across her face. Where others see joy, I see naked horror and panic in the eyes of the child. Every time I want to scream. And every time I ask myself these questions:

Whomst would invent such a thing?

After doing a quick search online, I find out that the device has been produced by numerous competing manufacturers and that it first appeared in 2013 at a tech trade fair. Since then, it’s proven itself to be rather tenacious, an exception among all those strange kitchen-device inventions whose infomercials can now only be found on YouTube. You can find it in junk shops, on eBay, or at AliExpress.

My only assumption for the reasoning behind its existence is that its inventor loves technology more than his or her sanity. Which raises further questions:

Have frying pans become obsolete and no one thought to tell me?

Sure, I’m no fan of scrubbing frying pans, but who says that’s any reason to throw out a kitchen tool that’s been used for centuries? Seems kind of extreme, if you ask me. Maybe some kid burned himself too many times on a pan and an inventive parent with a full-time job decided to invent this monstrosity instead, allowing the little rascals to prepare themselves delicious Egg-On-A-Stick without adult supervision or the threat of injury. On the other hand, the device opens up the possibility of an entirely new profession. Such as “food designer,” as claimed by one promotional video in which a woman shoves a sausage in the hole of the egg mass as if she’d lost all will to live.

Are we seriously so lazy that we don't care what our food looks like?

The fascination of putting raw food in a device and then getting something edible at the end is something that I can totally understand. Talk about saving time! And I always liked magic. It's pretty cool to be able to put a pot roast in a kitchen gadget with a timer, then watch TV for six hours without once having to go back to the kitchen to check that all’s well. Not to mention if the device can make homemade wine! It’s not a coincidence that the Thermomix is a coveted object.

Whether Thermomix, Instant Pot, or vertical egg cooker, people don’t seem to put up resistance so long as they can save themselves some time during the day. That the Egg-On-A-Stick hasn’t crossed a line for most people is something I find deeply unsettling.

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Who even eats scrambled eggs on the go?

People with careers! Better to eat an Egg-On-A-Stick in the subway than to simply eat it at home, right? That’s time management in 2019 for you, folks. The stick itself is actually useful, because after you’ve had your breakfast you can poke people until they give surrender their subway seat to you.

Is the vertical egg cooker the ultimate gadget for a protein-rich, lean diet?

The non-stick layer in the hole of the gray metallic mass enables you to fry your egg without butter or oil. This is healthy, sure, and maybe it'll make your doctor happy. But because you don’t actually have to move or exert any physical effort for your breakfast—since the egg rod simply crawls out of the hole when it’s ready—there are so many valuable calories you could be burning off while whisking your scrambled eggs, but don’t.

A zero-sum game, if you ask me.

Will the Egg-On-A-Stick replace the Long Egg, or is this simply part of its natural evolution?

And what came first? The Long Egg or the Egg Rod? The Long Egg, for those who have been spared, is a very long egg that can be cut into equal-sized slices. This invention from the 70s nearly brought one of my American MUNCHIES colleagues to despair. Next invention: Egg-cream cone, or an egg-sicle. Then you can get your dose of egg while on the beach. It won’t be long now.

Is this device ideal for the office?

Here’s at least one question I can answer with a resounding yes! Behold an eBay review from h2befjon, who prepares his breakfast at work with the Egg Cooker:

Screenshot von einer ebay-Review

Screenshot via eBay

I’d just like to alert everyone who, much like eBay user h2befjon, thinks behavior like this is totally normal to an important fact: Those who prepare eggs, bacon, or fish at work should probably consider working from home if possible.

And those who then carry out the procedure at their own desks, plugging in the vertical egg cooker between their laptop and phone, have clearly lost all control over their work-life balance.

And for everyone who hasn’t had enough of the Egg-On-A-Stick, MUNCHIES Denmark thoroughly tested the device and thought it was weird.