Selling Mr. Coffee: Design, Gender, and the Branding of a Kitchen Appliance

Everyday tasks—often nearly invisible to those performing them—can hold significant cultural meaning. During the 1970s millions of Americans replaced percolators with electric drip-and-filter coffeemakers. The Mr. Coffee coffeemaker and its spokesman, baseball great Joe DiMaggio, introduced this new method for brewing coffee. American women, long blamed by men for the percolator’s bitter brew, embraced the ease and improved taste of electric-drip coffee. Ushering this masculine-branded coffeemaker into millions of kitchens paved the way for another development: a modest increase in men’s contributions to housework during a decade when middle-class women increasingly sought full-time employment outside the home.