by Mark Bremer
Made by monkeys - the common steam iron. For those of us who still like a pressed shirt and a crease in their pants.
30 years ago, I had a steam iron that lasted and was easy to use. It finally just got too choked up and crapped out, even doing the self-clean regularly. It was 10-15 years old. Since then I have gone through countless steam irons. They leak, they crackle and spit lime sludge on your clothes, the water fill hole needs an eye-dropper to get the water in, the steam mysteriously stops coming out, the surface of the plate is so rough you could “sand” a pair of jeans with it (don’t ask what it did to my wife’s silk scarf) - and this with a hard “Teflon” anodize to make it “glide” - really!
What is it about such products these days that is so hard to get right. It’s not like it’s a new idea and there are still “bugs” to fix. There is 50 years or more of product history, but they still have to make the new models “bigger and worse”.
Until recently, I must admit, I would not fork out big bucks for an iron. I mean, after all, what is there to an iron? After much frustration (and unanswered letters to the owner of the brand(s) - not the manufacturer. This is probably some fly-by-night outfit in China), I went up-scale (still a fly-by-night outfit in China). The only difference was that the fill hole was big enough to actually poor a stream of water in without it bubbling over the floor. Have I just been unlucky or is this a universal now, crappy design, no product testing by real users (they probably use some pimply kid who’s never picked one up in his life before), crappy workmanship, no QA to catch the crap and consumer relations people in denial.
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