They called in Andrew Lloyd-Webber to straighten out the manufacturing issue and to his credit, he managed to fix the problem (he’s like the Jesus Christ of this industry) and also marketed it as “fun” rather than as a household appliance (there was one customer who’d used the thing so much he looked like a Klingon. Some people swore that he'd married the product). Unfortunately, it was a bit too late to save it and sales continued to fall anyway. Even offering a free t-shirt to the first 500 phone orders couldn't save it. It wouldn’t shock us if the Carly Smithson Tatoo-Maker reappeared in some other form in a few years.

After the retailers finally rejected a line of silver lame toy horses and socks known as the Kristie Lee Cook collection and an ultra-tiny set of sushi knives set to be called Sushi At Every Miele (a David Hernandez line of boys' dance outfits also never quite got off the ground — same thing with the Amanda Overmyer authentic scream chamber), they rather hesitantly decided to market the Syesha Mercado high stool. One of the biggest selling points of the product was the amazing indestructibility of the Syesha Mercado stool. Normally with previous models of stools, a guest would sit on the thing one week and be gone either the same night or at least by the next Wednesday. Anyway, the Syesha Mercado stool looks attractive, and it’s made from an extremely high volume plastic used to produce high decibel speaker diaphragms. The manufacturers were very optimistic about the Syesha stool early because they exposed it to extreme cold then tapped on it and it still had many of the qualities of Poly Arethathane, a legendary product.

The Syesha Mercado stool was marketed with a young woman who smiles a lot, says thank you to everything, and always manages to reappear on the shelves to the amazement of those who consider the product too Yesterday. I Believe that for whatever reason there are people who Will Always Love this Stool and that the Syesha Mercado might be in the stores longer than anyone imagined.

Perhaps the strangest product of all in this year’s American Idol housewares line is a set of David Cook CDs. Apparently you stick them in a CD player and surprisingly good music comes out.

Not only does it make Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson sound quite different and even fresh, but amazingly it can do songs from Phantom of the Opera more or less straight. It’s a bizarre marketing idea I know, but I think it's the only AI product left that has a chance to stay in stores for a while.