Science

7 Most Unusual Amazon Dash Buttons

Condoms, candles, and colored pencils! Oh my!

Agoraphobics, rejoice! One year into its Dash program, Amazon has added almost 80 new products to its button-mashing delivery system, bringing the total to more than 100, the company announced today.

How many times have you or a loved one issued forth a weary sigh, overwhelmed by the difficulties involved in ordering something via your smartphone’s Amazon app? How many times? How many times have you considered wandering downstairs and across the street to the literally-named convenience store to buy a Slim Jim, only to then roll your eyes and think “I can’t even”?

All kidding aside, pushing a button is easy, so it’s no wonder Amazon is adding more products to Dash.

And while ingenious developers have cracked open and reprogrammed Dash buttons to do other things, like order pizza, the hacks may not last as Amazon keeps adding new purposes for its new dash button.

Here’s Daniel Rausch, Director of Amazon Dash, in a press release about the expansion: “We heard loud and clear from customers that they wanted more brands, more categories, and more products in the program. We’re excited to now offer over 100 Dash Buttons representing top-name brands across dozens of retail categories and thousands of product options.

He continues: “Customers are using Dash Buttons more than once a minute, helping ensure they never run out of their everyday essentials.”

Amazon rolled out its Dash buttons a year ago and the program is quite simple, really: Dash buttons are little, branded quasi-gizmos; when you press single button, Amazon understands that you’d like to order a coconut water or whatever, then gets to shipping you said coconut water. A day or two later, the product materializes on your doorstep.

Here are a few of the more curious things announced today that you can now order with a finger:

Trojan

This is brilliant. There’s a real public health benefit to delivering condoms — the in-store purchase of which has been deemed “awkward” by countless Seinfeldian comedians — to people’s private residences.

Jolie Paris

“Jolie’s hand-poured soy wax candles are infused with carefully selected essential oils that awaken your senses and send you on a fragrant journey.”

It may pair nicely with the Trojan button!

ZICO Pure Coconut Water & O.N.E. Coconut Water

For an aforementioned hangover, perhaps.

Derwent

These are colored pencils. How often do you run out of colored pencils? How urgent is it that you replace those colored pencils? What are you going to do with those ten still-unsharpened pencils that are Vandyke Brown?

No matter. There’s now a button for that.

Lysol

For the particularly, repetitively compulsive artificial cleaners.

Solid Gold Pet Food

I don’t even know what this is, but it sounds a) too expensive to order with a button and b) genuinely unhealthy for your pet.

Dash Buttons are available to Prime members for $4.99 each, and they turn out to be free — with the first order through a Dash Button, members receive a $4.99 credit.

P.S. Agoraphobia, etymologically speaking, literally means “extreme fear of the marketplace.”

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