Would you wear air-purifying headphones?

Any high-end product that integrates two or more distinct functions is generally going to be a financial disaster. You pay for the headphones. You pay for the air purifier. In this case, you will also pay for the innovative, clever design, which the patent is designed to protect. So you will literally be “paying through the nose” for one of these devices.

Headphones are inherently unreliable. The ear pads rot and need replacing. The integrated lithium batteries wear out. Cables (or Bluetooth) break. Being portable, they are very prone to accidental damage.

Air purifiers have motors that are, or become, noisy as the bearings wear out. Bespoke carbon and HEPA filters cost way more than the cost of the air purifier over the life of the product.

At some point, one or other of these functions will cease to operate, or become uneconomical to repair or maintain. Would you wear headphones with a non-working air purifier, or vice versa? Of course not, so yet more WEEE waste to dispose of and another novelty product bites the dust.

Never mind the odd couple. My favourite ménage à trois – or is it quatre, or even cinq – would be the teasmade. These were most closely associated in the minds of the consumer with Goblin, a brand name owned by the British Vacuum Cleaner and Engineering Co. Ltd. They presumably forgot to patent the idea, as Swan and others made equivalent products.

At the most basic level, it coupled a small kettle with an alarm clock. At a set time, the kettle would dispense boiling water into a teapot and you could enjoy a hot cup of tea before rising from your warm bed. More elaborate versions incorporated a bedside light, a radio, and a small fridge to keep the milk cold. (OK, I made that last bit up.)

This was a device that was in its heyday between the era when middle class homes could no longer afford a housekeeper to bring the tea and light the fires, and more recent times when they could afford central heating and Nespresso® machines to make their own coffee.

I never had a teasmade, because the idea of having to clean it, fill it with water and tea leaves the night before, and somehow keeping a small jug of milk clean and fresh (hence the fridge), just seemed like too much effort.

The other problem I could see was the MTBF of all these elements (including the one in the kettle). One of the worst disasters that could befall any proud teasmade owner was to break the china teapot.