Hater’s Guide To Williams-Sonoma Catalog: 5 Takeaways

Christmas Scrooges and/or bargain hunters, you know who you are, and we know what you’ve been waiting for — Deadspin columnist Drew Magary’s annual “Hater’s Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catalog.” For many of you, the Williams-Sonoma catalog is, as Magary puts it, the “talisman of yuppie waste designed to lure in aspirational marks who have already ceded to living the bulk of their lives in monstrous, crippling debt.”

And if the catalog is your go-to source for gift-giving, sit back and chill. It’s all in good, mostly clean fun.

Magary's snarky take on consumerism has been a holiday staple for many since it debuted in 2012. And in case you’re rushing to the San Francisco-based retailer’s defense, Magary, also a contributor to GQ and a novelist, doesn’t limit his Hater’s Guides to the spendy Williams-Sonoma.

He also has compiled them for the MLB playoffs, the NBA finals, the World Cup, the Oscars and — well, you get the idea. He loves to hate, and many of you love it when he hates.

Here are five questions from this year’s Williams-Sonoma Hater’s Guide:

1. Just who is Williams-Sonoma targeting with Boska Fondue Sets? “You listen to me, Williams-Sonoma: There will NEVER be a fondueassaince. Ever. You can bring back a lot of things from the 1980s—tube tops, keyboards, a horrifying governmental indifference to the poor — but the fondue STAYS,” Magary writes.

2. If you want to stab a piece of fruit, do you really need Pineapple Cocktail Picks? “Not to do the sticker shock routine with you yet again, but selling a half-dozen toothpicks for 50 bucks takes balls the size of pineapples,” Magary observes, adding: “This is lunacy. ... Gimme one of those little plastic swords and I’m perfectly content. I will absolutely stage tiny swordfights with my brother using those little things. That’s garnish enough. You don’t need to go the full Tiffany with these.”

3. What’s up with Latke Starters? “Is this a thing? Do people generally need latke starters? I’m making a potato pancake, not a tub of yogurt ….” Magary chides “And please note how casually they toss out the ‘Simply add grated potatoes.’ You ever grate a potato? It SUCKS. The potato gets all slippery and there’s that weird film of foamy Santorum dirt on it. …”

4. Six Months of Cheese: Are you sure it'll last that long, Williams-Sonoma? “I like cheese as much as the next heart attack candidate but when I pay $300 for six months of cheese, that better amount to 9,000 pounds of cheese,” Magary writes. “... If you’re just sending me a stupid cheese platter every four weeks, that’s not acceptable to me. ... To me, six months of cheese means I can strip naked and tape the windows shut and live off that cheese for half the year, shutting myself in like a heroin addict. …”

5. What would possess anyone to spend $3,699.95 for a coffee machine, even if it is a $1,200 savings? Magary says at that price, the coffee machine better dispense more than coffee — bitcoins, for example — and at top brew strength, it better turn him into Spider-Man. “And not only do the good folks at W-S presume you have a Tesla down payment to spend on a coffeemaker, but they routinely assume that you have more available space on your countertop than the totality of the Chesapeake Bay coastline,” he writes.

» There’s so much more, so be sure to go to Deadspin to read the entire 2017 Hater’s Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catalog.

AP Photo/James A. Finley