Automatic Drip Coffee Makers
Written on Apr 10, 2026
It may not be the best automatic drip coffee maker ever made available, but Mr. Coffee was the first of its kind to hit the home market in 1972.
In business, you either have to be the first or the best if you want to have guaranteed success. Okay, so you can get away with being second best and still succeed, but it's not guaranteed.
Mr. Coffee and Joe DiMaggio
When the advertisements started appearing on television in 1973, Joe DiMaggio was the celebrity spokesperson pitching it for the company. Joltin' Joe DiMaggio was a famous baseball player who played exclusively for the New York Yankees from 1936 to 1951.
Mr. Coffee automatic drip coffee makers and coffee makers like them suddenly started appearing in kitchens across America after he started promoting them. If I remember correctly, General Electric produced the first competitor to the Mr. Coffee automatic drip coffee maker.
I don't know if it was the product or Joe that convinced my mother to buy a Mr. Coffee, but she bought one nevertheless. I don't remember exactly when she bought it, but I know she bought it before our family moved to Hawaii in 1974.
DiMaggio died in 1999 at the age of 84.
The Automatic Drip Coffee Maker vs. the Coffee Percolator
When the automatic drip coffee makers first came out, the coffee didn't taste as good after brewing as it did with percolators. The trouble was that the coffee grinds available in most stores were still designed for the coffee percolator. After the grinds specifically made for automatic drip coffee makers hit the market, most people could no longer tell the difference.
There are some people who lament the disappearance of the percolators, saying they were more "green" than the current coffee makers. They cite the paper being used for the filters and water evaporation as being "non-green".
People haven’t realized that companies are using fast-growing trees only for paper, even though paper remains recyclable. The new trees reach maturity before they're even needed.
I don't buy the water idea either. A percolator puts out as much steam as an automatic drip coffee maker. I only had to put my hand above a spout one time to find that out.
Today, the best coffee makers for home use are automatic drip coffee makers. They're the most widely used coffee makers supported by the coffee industry. As with any technology, that could change, and something more popular may come along.
My Coffee Maker
Before I moved to the Philippines in 2006, I probably went through two or three during the previous 20 years. They seemed to last several years at a time. Brewed coffee isn't a big thing in the Philippines like it is in the United States. There, instant coffee is way more popular.
More than 10 years ago, and I don't remember exactly when, I bought a coffee maker at the Royal Subic store at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. I bought it for only 800 pesos (less than $16 USD), and it was manufactured in South Korea.
The brand name for it has long since gone out of business. I still have it stashed away in a dirty kitchen cabinet. Before the advent of online stores like Lazada Philippines, I would have to had travel to Manila to find a better coffee maker.
It was never worth the trouble. Today, I'm so used to drinking instant coffee that I really don't care if I ever make brewed coffee again.Image by Angela CoffeeRank (coffee-rank.com), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons