Oh, the joys of lightbulb cooking: back when our biggest worries were whether or not our Easy-Bake cake or brownies would turn out perfectly.
Chances are, during your childhood you either owned an Easy-Bake Oven for yourself or had a friend who did. And chances are also that this was one of the centerpieces of your playdates. Cooking normal-sized food just never seemed fun when you could make the miniature version of it in your miniature oven.
Courtesy of toysrus.com
With all of the fond memories of this beloved childhood toy, haven’t you ever wondered what the Easy-Bake Oven is like today? More importantly, are the non-nineties youth still cooking in tiny ovens for fun?
Keep reading to find out more than you ever needed to know about Easy-Bake Ovens.
- Invented in 1963 by Ronald Howes, the first Easy-Bake Oven sold for $15.95 (about the equivalent of $115 today).
- The oven was originally heated by an incandescent lightbulb.
- Original mixes for the Easy-Bake included popcorn, potato chips and bubble gum.
- By 1997 after a few makeovers, 16 million units of the toy had been sold.
- In 2002, a version of the oven geared towards boys was released. This was called the Queasy Bake Cookerator and included recipes like Mud ‘n Crud Cake and Drool Dog Bones.
- A recall of almost 100,000 Easy-Bakes occurred in 2007 due to high reports of finger amputation in children from getting their fingers caught in the oven. (Umm….)
- The television show Friends once referenced the easy bake oven in an episode. Can you say insta-star?
- The Easy-Bake Oven is still in existence. It sells for between $30 and $60 and boasts a wide variety of mixes from pizza to whoopie pies to chocolate truffles. They really stepped things up.
- They also have a pretty darn peppy commercial going on.
While the future of the Easy-Bake Oven is uncertain, I don’t see the novelty of tiny cakes and waiting fifteen minutes for one doughnut to bake wearing off any time soon.
The Easy-Bake will always hold a special place in our hearts (and in our stomachs).