The Alessi Juicy Salif designed by Philippe Starck takes the humble orange juicer and turns it into a work of art that is beautiful as well as practical. It is considered an icon of industrial design that has been displayed in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Made from cast aluminium polished to a mirror finish, the grooved head neatly funnels the juice to the glass placed underneath.

Like traditional citrus juicers, the Alessi Juicy Salif is entirely hand operated so you can enjoy freshly squeezed juice without worrying about increasing your carbon footprint.  Kids will love using it too making it a great way of getting fruit into them.

The Alessi Juicy Salif Juicer by Philippe Starck is availabe from ElectricShopping

Technorati Tags: classic, designer, kitchen

Save £5 when you spend £30 or more at Hawkin’s Bazaar, purveyors of tomfoolery since 1973.

Just enter the discount voucher code Christmas08 when you checkout. This code is valid until 31/12/2008

A great idea for a stocking filler is to buy (or make) a gift box and fill it with little bits from Hawkin’s Bazaar - rolling eyballs, stretchy men, splat frogs, noisy putty, giant dice, that kind of thing - throw in a few funsize chocolate bars and you’ve created a “Discovery Box”.  We did this last chrismas and it went down very well indeed

Technorati Tags: Discount Codes, Gift Ideas, stocking fillers

RoboMop Automatic Floor Cleaner

RoboMop is the perfect gadget for those that hate housework and would much rather be doing something more interesting.

RoboMop will whizz around hard floors (tiles, laminate, Lino, vinyl flooring etc.) and clean a 60 meter square area in about an hour.  And because RoboMop has a low profile it can get into those tricky to clean areas too!

While RoboMop is working you’re free to go off and do those more interesting things.

The Sunday Times Gear Section said:

“An autopilot floor cleaner sounds too good to be true. However, it does a surprisingly decent job on a wooden or tiled floors.”

RoboMop comes complete with rechargeable batteries, a charger and a pack of RoboMop cleaning pads.

RoboMop is available now from MenKind.  Visit the site to see a video of RoboMop in action.

Technorati Tags: Gift Ideas, gizmos and gadgets

WatchWatchWatch.co.uk are offering HotZest visitors an exclusive 10% off everything - no minimum order, no expiry date, simply 10% of everything including the shipping.

WatchWatchWatch.co.uk sell watches and sunglasses from well-known names such as Diesel Sunglasses, Gul and Kahuna surf watches, Jeep watches and Indian Motorcycle sunglasses - including the popular Indian night driving glasses. They pride themselves on offering low prices, speedy dispatch and superb customer service.

To get your 10% discount, just enter the discount code HOTZEST at the checkout.

Technorati Tags: Discount Codes, sunglasses, watches

Feel Unique are offering 10% off all their Men’s products until 31 May 2008. They’ve also set-up a page full of Father’s Day gift suggestions.

Feel Unique specialises in skincare products, cosmetics, perfumes, aftershaves, anti-ageing products and related accessories from top names such as Christian Dior, L’Oreal, Joop Homme, Calvin Klein etc. all at great savings compared to high street prices. Being based in the Channel Islands they are able to supply products ex-VAT. They even offer free UK postage and say that orders received before midday will be despatched same day.

To get 10% off all men’s products at Feel Unique simply enter the Discount Code 10FATHERS at the checkout. Remember, this offer expires on 31 May so don’t hang about.

Technorati Tags: Discount Codes, father's day, skincare

The Hotzest UK Shopping directory now has 250 links to UK on-line shops covering a wide spectrum of goods and products. I’m not resting on my laurels though. there’s still plenty of interesting UK shops out there waiting to be discovered and added.

Don’t forget, if you own a UK based online store, or even if you have a favourite one that you use, you can submit it to the directory - it’s free for regular listings. If your favourite store is already listed, why not rate it or write a quick review so other visitors know how good it is.

Here’s to the next 250!

Technorati Tags: links, submit

Thorntons have put together a great range of chocolatey yumminess for Father’s Day on June 15th.

There’s chocolate sports cars with iced messages, such as “I Love My Dad” and “World’s No. 1 Dad” and a chocolate football which can be iced with your own special message for just 50p extra.

The ulimate Thorton’s gift is the Father’s Day Gift Hamper that’s choc-a-block with toffee, chocolate and fudge.

If you spend more than £25 enter the code FB18 at the checkout and you’ll get free shipping too! (offer ends 12th June 2008).

Thortons last day for Father’s Day orders is 4pm on Thursday 12th June 2008

Technorati Tags: chocolate, father's day, gifts

In 1990 I wrote a letter of complaint to Mars about their plans to rebrand the Marathon Bar to the Snickers Bar. I pointed out the dictionary defined snicker as “to laugh in a half-suppressed, indecorous or disrespectful manner, and the madness of using a plural as a singular. Incredibly, despite this, they went ahead with their plans anyway.

You can imagine my delight, therefore, when last week it was reported that, after an 18 year absence, Mars intended to bring back Marathons albeit for a short period.

I wrote to Mars again to confirm that this is the case and today received the following reply:

We can confirm that we have no current plans to bring back the original name in a three month trial and are sorry, if this has caused disappointment.

It seems to me that this was a case of the papers jumping the gun and reading too much into the fact that Mars had reregistered the “Marathon” trademark. I guess they were simply protecting the trademark so that no-one else could bring out a chocolate bar called Marathon.

On the other hand, how many times have we heard politicians announce “We have no current plans to…” and then do it a short while after?

Technorati Tags: chocolate, marathon, mars, snickers

A few discount codes for you:

• Save 5% on boots, shoes and trainers at Cloggs throughout May: AFMY05
• A 10% discount on all sports gifts at Devoted To Sport during May: AF09
• Save 7% on Pet Food at PetMeds: PETFOODOFFER
• 5% off all fashion tights, stockings, hold ups, socks, anti-DVT flight socks, and legcare products at Tights Please: TP5

Technorati Tags: codes, discounts, vouchers

Cybercandy is more of a rediscovery than discovery. I used them several years ago when I made-up personalised Christmas selection boxes for various nephews and nieces (plus one for myself of course).

Cybercandy import and sell sweets, chocolate and soft drinks from various places around the world, including America, Canada, Australia, Japan and Europe. It’s the perfect way to try something completely new or variations on old favourites - how about Almond M&Ms or Tropical Skittles?

Many of the names you will probably recognize from watching American TV: Hercheys, Reeses, Twinkies, etc. Cybercandy gives you the opportunity to try out some of these familiar sounding products.

For a new taste experience you could try the Japanese section or sample some Cactus Candy.

The Cybercandy site is a joy to browse with lots to discover. Each of the countries have their own section and there are ‘Specialist Stores’ such as The KitKat store (seven different KitKats at the time of writing) and the M&M Colorworks store (200g bags of single colour M&Ms so you can make your own selection).

The one downside to Cybercandy is the prices seem expensive when compared to products that are freely available in the UK - £1.15 for the Almond M&Ms for example. When you consider that the alternative would be to travel to the countries of origin it doesn’t seem so bad.

Have you used Cybercandy? Tell me about it in the comments or write a review in the HotZest directory

Technorati Tags: chocolate, sweets