Happy National Easy Bake Oven Day.
It was today in 1963 that kids could start baking by lightbulb thanks to these colorful little toy appliances.
And plenty have over the years; some of them went on to come up with food creations far beyond the prepackaged cake mixes, and at least a few decided to make things weird.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The Easy Bake Oven was definitely the first toy oven to become a best seller, but it was not the first toy oven for sale.
In the 19th Century, there were child-sized ovens that were heated by burning wood pellets.
In the early 20th Century, toy ovens moved to electric heating.
But you can understand why some parents in those times were not raring to give their kids toys with open heating elements and/or fire.
Kenner Products research director Ronald Howes modeled the Easy Bake Oven after the heat lamps used by outdoor food vendors.
These ovens ran on the heat generated by incandescent light bulbs, which in close quarters was plenty hot enough.
The Easy Bake Oven was a hot toy right from the beginning; Kenner put it up for sale during the holidays and sold out its entire first run.
Not only did the company make money off the ovens, it sold 25 different mixes for those who had run through their initial supply.
Later, it would partner with Betty Crocker and several fast food companies to offer even more baking options.
This toy was marketed very heavily toward girls; the tagline in the ads was “just like Mom’s—bake your cake and eat it, too!”
It wasn’t until decades later that kids launched a successful campaign to make ovens that were more gender neutral.
There have been tens of millions of ovens sold over the years, and hundreds of millions of baking mixes.
Some youngsters have gone way down the Easy Bake rabbit hole and developed their own recipes; there have actually been cookbooks for people who like to make meals through the toy.
There are also stories of kids using the ovens for their own less advisable purposes, like seeing if plastic food from other toy sets could be baked – or seeing if they could make little cakes out of mud and trick their siblings into eating them.
Today is National Candy Day, so probably a good time to visit the online Candy Wrapper Museum.
For over half a century, Darlene Lacey has been collecting, preserving and sharing her huge collection of the wrappers that millions of us have opened before eating lollipops, candy bars and other sweets.
She says the collection doesn’t include many pieces of candy, since they don’t usually last as long as the wrappers.
The Untold History of the Easy Bake Oven (Gizmodo)
Take a Peek Inside the Candy Wrapper Museum (Smithsonian)
Photo by Bradross63 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikicommons