Let's get one thing straight. There are gadgets and there are gadgets. Gadgets to predict the weather. Gadgets to project the time onto the ceiling. Gadgets to synchronise your PDA and your PC. In fact, one used to believe there was a gadget for everything. But one was wrong.

For now there is a Snoopy-branded gadget to make flavoured ice. And your children - or just the big child within - will go bananas for it. You will, I'm sure, remember the irony-laced Peanuts from your childhood. Charlie Brown. Linus. Snoopy. The teacher going mwah-mwah-mwah-mwaaah. Those American johnnies simply loved it, spawning a bazillion Snoopy-branded gizmos. And the Snow Cone machine is foremost among them, able to grind ice cubes into delicate flakes of snow with just a few (dozen) turns of the handle, ready for flavouring with a gloopy-sweet syrup straight from heaven itself.

The Snow Cone Machine is rather un-machine like, resembling, of all things, a dog house. Its functionality is cunningly hidden within. Full instructions are included, of course, which makes snow-cone manufacture simply child's play. Which is just as well, really, because that's what it is intended to be. The Snoopy Snow Cone Machine. It's an all-inspired, all-American favourite. And best of all, it costs peanuts.