The Toy That Became a Legend

 

QUESTION: When I was 8 years old, I got an Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas. It was the yellow, boxy Mini-Wave model that looked more like a microwave. I loved baking little hockey-puck sized cakes in it. My brother, who was 5 years old at the time, often played with me. One day he said we should try cooking one of the plastic steaks from Mattel Tuff Stuff Play Food set. He pushed dit into the oven’s slot but soon the plastic steak emitted a horrible odor as it melted inside the oven. And that was the end of my Easy-Bake Oven. It seems Easy-Bake Ovens were around for a long time in one form or another. What can you tell me about them, like who invented them and who produced them?

ANSWER: Easy-Bake Ovens were indeed on the market for a long time. In fact, the toy became a legend in its own time. It was one of the first toys that people went crazy over at Christmas.  

It all began back in November of 1963. That was when the Kenner Products debuted its new toy. By using light bulbs as the heat source, the firm was able to convince parents that the Easy-Bake Oven was safe.  

Working mini ovens have been around since the Victorian Era. From the late 19th century, manufacturers produced child-size ovens made of steel or cast iron which used wood pellets or solid fuel for heat. As electric ovens replaced wood-burning ovens in the 1920s, the toy world did the same. In the 1930s, toy-train maker Lionel produced a line of electric toy ovens. In the 1950s, kids coveted little fiberglass-insulated ovens with brand names like Little Lady, Little Chef, and Suzy Homemaker.

While the Easy-Bake Oven wasn’t the first working toy oven, it was the first to use a light bulb as the heat source. It was also first to become a wildly popular trend—every little girl had to have one.

By the early 1960s, Kenner had become a leading toy manufacturer, with salesmen all over the country. The executives at Kenner wanted to make toys that allowed kids to do the same things as adults. For boys, they produced construction sets and for girls, kitchen and baking sets. Although the firm thought of the Easy-Bake Oven came to be thought of as a girls’ toy, they always looked for ways to market it to boys.

Kenner also encouraged its employees to think outside the box. They believed that anyone could come up with a great idea for a toy. So they held brainstorming sessions where any employee pitch an idea. And that’s how the Easy-Bake Oven was born.

The employee with the bright idea for the oven was salesman Norman Shapiro, who demonstrated toys in the Macy’s store in New York City. He got his inspiration for the oven when he saw a pretzel vendor. But instead of cakes, he oven would bake pretzels. The executives loved his idea, but suggested that instead of a pretzel oven, it should be one that backed cakes and cookies.

But at that time electric toy ovens weren’t considered very safe. so Kenner’s creative team had to come up with a solution to overcome parents’ fears. And that solution was to use incandescent light bulbs as the heating source. By using conventional light bulbs, something kids were around every day, they were able to convince parents the toy was safe—even though it got up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, a standard baking temperature, inside the oven. At first the designers wanted to name it the Safety-Bake Oven to emphasize the safety aspect. But print and radio advertising regulatory agencies told them they couldn’t because it had not safety track record.

The Easy-Bake Oven debuted in November 1963, just in time for the Christmas shopping season. “The first Easy-Bake Oven didn’t look like much of an oven. It was this box that came in turquoise or pale yellow, and a handle on the top. It had a slot that you’d push the pan into, and then a window where you could watch the cake being baked. The cooling chamber on the side had this fake range built over it.”

But its strange appearance didn’t prevent it from becoming the must-have toy of the season. They only had time to manufacture half a million of them before November. The first Easy-Bake Ovens sold out immediately.

Kenner made the Easy-Bake Oven its top advertising priority, placing ads with taglines like just like Mom’s—bake your cake and eat it, too!” in women’s magazines and Archie comics. On television, Easy-Bake commercials appeared not only during Saturday morning cartoons, but also during prime-time programs like “I Love Lucy” and “Hogan’s Heroes.”

Just as quickly as it released the oven, Kenner put out 25 different mixes and mix sets that could be bought separately. Because they were packaged in aluminum foil laminated with polyethylene, the first cake mixes could last two years—a long time for a cake mix.

The Easy-Bake Oven came out in a time when America was in love with technology, particularly appliances and other innovations that made day-to-day chores faster and easier. Engineers at Kenner were constantly attempting to improve the light-bulb cooking technology.

Kenner tempted kids with a variety of cake mixes. Besides cakes and cookies, Easy-Bake mixes eventually offered ways to make your own candy bars, fudge, pecan brittle, pretzels, pizza—and even bubble gum. The company tried all sorts of things—they even came up with a way kids could pop popcorn in the Easy-Bake Oven. But they always went back to cookies and cakes.

In 1967, four years after the Easy-Bake debuted, General Mills acquired Kenner Products, and immediately saw the cross-branding opportunity. The company adapted its Betty Crocker cake mixes for the Easy-Bake Oven: Kids could then make 3.5-inch cakes in popular flavors like Angel Food, Devil’s Food, German Chocolate, Yellow, Butter Pecan, Strawberry, Rainbow Chip, and Lemon.

Twenty years later, Tonka Corporation bought Kenner Products, and then in 1991, Hasbro acquired Tonka. Hasbro also saw the Easy-Bake Oven as a marketing opportunity for other toys, characters, and brands they licensed or partnered with. Instead of making plain mini-cakes, in the early 1990s, kids could also decorate them.

Kids could make a Scooby-Doo-themed cake or a pizza from Pizza Hut. They could make a cake like an Oreo cookie or a McDonald’s apple pie. They even had a My Little Pony mix—basically a chocolate cake, onto which a little baker could place a Little Pony figure on top.

The look of the Easy-Bake oven changed drastically over the years. In the beginning, it was all about the colors that were trendy in the kitchen. In the 1970s, the ovens came in burnt orange, avocado green, and harvest gold. In the late 1970s and 1980s, microwaves became popular, so the Easy-Bake Oven looked more like a microwave. More recent Easy-Bake Ovens have had less to do with the kitchen decor and more to do with what colors and designs kids like, such as pink and purple.

Engineers at Kenner constantly attempted to improve the light-bulb cooking technology. Originally, the Easy-Bake Oven used two 100-Watt incandescent light bulbs, one on top and one on bottom, so it would heat the cake evenly on both sides.. Engineer Charles Cummings figured out how to design the inside of the Easy-Bake Oven so it worked like a convection oven, using only one light bulb. This made the Easy-Bake Oven smaller and easier to produce and ship. In the late 1970s, Kenner introduced the Super Easy-Bake Oven, a larger version that came with two pans, a regular-size Easy-Bake cake pan and a larger one.

Because the Easy-Bake Oven was rated as safe for children 8 and older, Kenner hoped to find a way to market it to kids as young as 4. Also in the 1970s, they produced the Warm-Bake Oven, which used hot water. There was a tray parents could fill with hot water. The young baker then put the cake batter in a sealed container and slid it in the oven, dipping it into the water. The hot water would then cause the dough to rise. The firm even tried  another version—the 3 Minute Cake Baker—that vibrated to help the dough rise. And so the legend continued.

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