The Pitch:
An intelligent, compact, honest-to-goodness robot bartender that serves up drink after drink without once bitching about how badly you tip. Don’t be fooled by its appearance – sure, a black box is not quite as exciting as having R2D2 serve you drinks from a little tray on his head, but this thing whips up cocktails in mere seconds.
What it really is:
Monsieur really is a robot bartender! The simple touchscreen interface lets you choose the theme of your evening, and tells you exactly what ingredients you’ll need to buy. Having a cigar lounge kind of a night? You’ll be wanting whiskies and cognacs. Going for a tiki bar? Then it’s rums and fruity mixers for you, friend. Once these ingredients have been poured into the eight containers inside the compact box (or, in the case of liquor bottles, just plugged directly in, if you prefer), the WonderDrunk 5000 (as we fondly came to think of it) brings up a list of every possible cocktail. Choose one, set the desired strength of the drink, then simply press the button, and in the blink of an eye, you’ll have a Dirty Dog or a Sex On The Beach poured and ready to guzzle.
But what if you’re not sure what cocktail you want? Not a problem. If you can tell Monsieur an ingredient you like, the general sensation you’re after (refreshing, say, or tropical), and what kind of cocktail you enjoy (a shot, a low ball, etc.), it will come up with the closest possible match to your choices. Basically, it’s a machine that translates your wishes into alcohol. We haven’t loved a machine this much since that vacuum cleaner when we were 14. Uh…we really liked vacuuming, alright?
Who it’s for:
This thing could be used either for entertaining at home, or as a handy labor-saving device in a bar. There are two models, both of which are available here now: the eight-bottle version costs $2,699, while the smaller, four-bottle model costs $1,499. We can also emphatically say that, after the deliriously happy two hours we spent playing with it in the office, it’s definitely for Maxim.
What’s extra cool:
The Monsieur comes with its own app, so if you’ve managed to create the perfect cocktail at home, you can tell any other Monsieur device to make it to the exact same specifications. Even better, it monitors your drink intake and likely blood alcohol level, and suggests local cab companies to get you home. It’ll even give you updates when you’re running low on certain ingredients. You know you’re going to love getting an important-sounding alert that just says, “Buy Vodka.”
What’s missing:
A tank-destroying laser cannon. What? We’ve been wanting a robot bartender with the capacity for lethal force since 1986.
