From Pacman-shaped oven mitts, Star-Trek Enterprise pizza cutters, to motorised ice cream cones, beer bras, mini doughnut and cupcake makers, and candle-lit chocolate fondue sets, kitchen gadgets are getting wackier and more absurd.
Yet the extreme kitchen appliances trend started long ago.
The Polish inventor Lewis L.
Salton is often touted as the pioneer of quirky household appliance, and invented a number of gadgets in the 1950s such as the Salton Hotray, an electric serving tray that kept food hot, the Salton Peanut Butter Machine, which reduced peanuts to either smooth or chunky butter, an ice cream maker and a yogurt machine.
While these appliances probably would have been bizarre and revolutionary in their time, here's a small assortment of some today's crazy kitchen appliances and accessories.
• Mini doughnut and cupcake factories - resembling waffle-presses, these mini baking stations offer a quick, mess-free way to bake 6 of your own mini sweet treats at a time, without the calories associated with glazed, deep-fried (yet admittedly delicious) pre-made varieties.
• DIY Juice to Alcohol Kit - this inexpensive fermenter turns juice into a fizzy alcoholic beverage.
You simply pour in the yeast sachet, pop the airlock lid on, and the yeast converts the fructose of the juice into alcohol and carbonation.
• Wavebox Portable Microwave Oven - invest in this portable microwave which runs on batteries, or can be plugged into the wall or car - perfect for that much needed traffic jam snack.
• Novelty Toasters - inventors in China have come up with some bizarre inventions designed to make your breakfast a little more interesting.
The Smile Cooking Toaster is a transparent toast-making device which cooks a variety of smiley face shapes into your toast.
Meanwhile, the Toast Messenger has a little message board on top of the toaster, and anything that gets written on it gets "toasted" into the toast itself.
• Medieval Espresso Machine - a coffee maker shaped like a giant, silver medieval spiked ball.
Need we say more? If you're looking for to get a microwave, you can either buy or rent white goods.
For something more exciting than rental finance, these new trends in crazy and quirky kitchen appliances make great gifts for all the geeky foodies in your life.