Selects: How Easy Bake Ovens Work

Easy Bake Ovens are as iconic as a toy can get, as American as apple pie or baseball. Learn all about these light bulb cooking, working ovens that endanger children to this day, in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody, it's Chuck here on a Saturday. I'm not
gonna be weird this week, I promise you. I'm gonna
take you back in time though, to November, because this
is one of our episodes on famous toys. We love
doing these apps, their nostalgia bombs for everyone that listens.
And this is all about the easy Bake Oven. That's
why it's called how Easy Bake Oven's work. Welcome to

(00:26):
Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Ramsey over there. The usual,
which means it's time for Stuff you Should Know. A
nostalgia edition. Colen T. S Hodgman. Yeah, we've done a

(00:52):
few toys. Um plato Uh, slinkys right, what else? Well
does a boomerang count as a toy? Uh? It's away
alive mate. Um. We've done tons, we did silly putty,
silly putty, we did um uh you know a bunch

(01:15):
that the balls. Yeah, the balls the balls episode How
Balls Work? They round and they bounced. We said balls
like a million times in that episode. Uh. Yeah, this
one's kind of cool. Though, the easy bake oven, which
I never had one. Did you ever have one in
your home? I don't think so. No. I don't think
my sister had one either, although I was a pretty

(01:36):
tubby kid, so it's possible that my mom was like,
make sure your brother doesn't know you have one of those.
Do not feed your brother anything from there. But it's
interesting that this is one where uh, sort of a
very simple idea and you never can tell what's gonna
hit toy wise, nothing super complex about this other than

(01:56):
you could literally bake food and sort of pretend to
be an adult in the kitchen. That's that was the
basis of it. Being an adult. That was kind of
Kenner's thing. And Kenner, the people who made Star Wars toys,
were the ones behind this, and they were very much
into um toys that like let kids pretend they were

(02:19):
growing ups. Yeah, that was their bag. Yeah. I have
a new neighbor. Actually, shout out to Rick Kathy. Hey, guys,
where they really got into your skin? Huh? What? Rick
and Cathy got a shout out on the podcast and
their new neighbors. Jeez. Yeah, because he worked for I
was talking to him and I was like, he seems
like a good guy. He was like, what you know,
what do you do? Ricky's retired? Now what did you do?

(02:42):
And He's like, I was a toy and action figure
designer for Kenner And I was like, wow, whoa what years?
He came on after his first The first thing he
worked on was the Tim Burton Batman movies. Nice and
he stayed on for a long time, like his whole career,
like after they were sold and everything pretty that is
very cool. Yeah, good for him. Yeah, so he still

(03:04):
does wonderful uh sculpture. So I'll bet just go after
Rick Watkins art online and then check it out. I'm
gonna I'm going to check it out. But I mean,
Kenneda is such a big deal to like two people
our age and of many ages. But I didn't realize
that they didn't realize their origin as a company. Remember

(03:25):
that we talked. We did a whole action figures episode, remember,
and we talked a lot about Kenner. Was that a
two part episode or was it just like an hour
and a half long? It was very long, but um,
Kenner almost didn't do the Star Wars ones if I remember,
But for us at least that put Kenna on the map.
What I didn't realize is that Kenner was already on

(03:47):
the map as far as toys go. And one of
the ways that they got there was from the Easy
Bake Oven, which debuted in November of nineteen, right around
the time that John Kennedy was shot. Yeah, but Kenner
had been around since the nineteen forties. Um Albert Philip
and Joseph steiner Um formed the company after, as legend goes,

(04:08):
one of them saw a bubble you know, maker bubble
wand or whatever you call him, and it was like, hey,
if I could do a gun that shoots bubbles, we
might be onto something. And that was our very first product,
is the bubble Matic Gun, and then whatever, less than
twenty years later, the Easy Bake Oven. Even though, as
we learned today and yesterday, there had been toy ovens

(04:32):
since like the Victorian days. Yes, like really really dangerous
I know, like real real little ovens like wood burning
pellet solid fuel stoves made of cast iron that were
sized down for little kids to you. Yeah, basically like
here's the oven that can kill your parents. We'll just
make a smaller one they can kill you. Yeah. Um. Yeah,

(04:55):
So the children's play oven function play oven um history
very kind of closely tracks the real oven history, right
Like when there were cast iron, wood burning ovens, there
were kids versions of them. As they as real ovens
moved into electric ovens, there were kids versions of them. Apparently,

(05:18):
UM Lionel the train the model trainmakers, they made some
in the thirties. Also, we want to give a shout
out to Lisa Hicks and the people at Collectors Weekly
for a great article we also used for this episode two.
But um in the thirties there were electric ovens. By
the forties or fifties, I think there were fiberglass insulated ovens,

(05:42):
electric ovens. It was just like a small oven for kids,
but they were ovens. They were extremely dangerous. And Um
Kenner had this really great idea and the reason that
this idea came about at Kenna to begin with, So
apparently Kenner was really big on having like ideas could

(06:03):
come from anywhere. Anybody in the company float an idea
and people would listen. And they had like regular meetings
where you know, there were bull sessions. Maybe they ordered
some like chow Maine or something like that. Everyone rolled
up their sleeves and relaxed and and spat out ideas,
and one of the salesman from Kenner came back in
from the field and said, you know what, I saw something.

(06:25):
I saw some pretzel vendors keeping their pretzels warm on
the street using a lightbulb. What if we used a
light bulb to heat up an oven for the little
kiddies And somebody, I think Charles House, Ralph House, well,
Norman Shapiro was that gentleman, and then Ronald House. Ronald

(06:45):
House was the big time inventor for Kinner, who had
a couple of like really big products under his belt,
and he was like that that's an ace's idea. That's
exactly how we talked. Probably everyone hated him for it,
but he was really good at inventing toy so they
had to put up with that. Yeah, but Kinner's deal,

(07:05):
like you were saying, was find things that mimic adult things.
And that's like kind of I bet like kids are
gonna dig that stuff. And they did from like and
kids still do little toy lawnmowers and toy bulldozers. And
I mean, Ruby's got a little cleaning set with like
a duster and a dust pan and a mop and
she she o C D no, But I mean all

(07:28):
the time she will say, you know, come on, daddy,
let's clean, and she'll hand me a mop. That's a
little low c D. Well, no, that's good then, yeah,
I like where she said it. Did you have one
of those um plastic safety razors so you could shave
next to your dad? No? I did, but I was
I think a lot of boys are pretty obsessed with
shaving before they have whiskers, and I think I heard

(07:49):
that they would actually stimulate hair growth. And I was
about to say, I remember being worried about that. Yeah,
because I didn't have I had a pretty I mean,
looking at me now, you would never know, but I
didn't have a lot of facial hair going on until
well into college. Was it like lacking or did it
come in patchy just a little bit, sort of like
my brother is now. He just stayed in that phase

(08:10):
where your brother's got a perfect chiseled face. Well, I
know that's because he doesn't have a beard, but um,
Scott can grow a pretty decent gotee now, but I don't.
I don't think he could grow the full beard, but
his his was. We were both spotty like a little
bit above the lip, a little bit on the chin.
One part just kind of trace to line up to

(08:31):
your eye from around from under your nose. Yeah, but
I mean it was sort of a family thing. We're
not Harry dudes. We don't have very hairy legs or
it is odd that you have a full beard, like
I don't have hairy arms or anything like that. Your
your beast. I don't know if beasts is the right word.
But yes, I'm a little hairy. You're a Harry guy.
My chest hair definitely plucks out from under my shirt.

(08:53):
Have you ever done any like a laser or anything
like that? Yeah, good for you. No, I'm just I'm Harry. No,
I mean your normal. It's not like you're Robin Williams.
Yeah he was airy, Yes he was, God rest his soul. Yes, indeed.
So back to the ovens. So, um, the idea has
been put out there now by Norman Shapiro, Yes, yeah, okay, so,

(09:14):
and it was taken up by Ronald House and this
was this was huge and groundbreaking because again there were
safe there were um unsafe ovens for kids that have
been around since the nineteenth century. What these guys had
just happened upon was the way to make another unsafe
oven seems safe to parents. That was That was it.

(09:35):
That was the genius of this idea. That is what
made easy bake ovens take off. What they had figured
out was that if they used a light bulb as
the heating element, and believe me, a lightbulb can can
heat up an oven um Yeah, up to three fifty
which is a common baking jump. Yes, from a light bulb.

(09:56):
And actually at first as we'll see a pair of
light bulbs, but the fact is they're light bulbs and
parents are familiar with light bulbs. They don't seem weird
or scary. It's not a wood pellet. And the fact
that it's not like a heating element like in an
actual oven, it's just a light bulb. That is what
they used to convince parents that this was a safe
product that they could buy for their kids. It was
a genius idea, it really was. And like you tease

(10:20):
a second ago, the very first model, and if you
look at that very first one, it doesn't really even
look like an oven. Well certainly the new one doesn't either. No.
I did go online. I was like, maybe I should
get one of those, But they're ugly now they I'm
sorry to the person who designed them. Yes, I'm glad
you said it. They're ugly little ovens. Yeah, they should

(10:41):
kind of go back to looking more classic. I think
it would be my advice. Um. But they used to
one incandescent bulbs at first, one over the top and
another under the bottom. Obviously they were trying to get
an even heat because you're baking things, right, and and
they very wisely designed this thing, um so that the

(11:03):
actual oven part was basically inaccessible to the kid on
either side. So just imagine a box. Um. Okay, oh man,
here's the way. It's my favorite thing when you try
to describe something. Let me see if I if I
close my eyes, it works. Uh. Imagine a box and

(11:24):
then coming out from either side of the box or
a couple of little little arms. But the arms are
half arms, and they're rectangular and hollow, and they're actually openings.
One opening, you slide in the uncooked thing that you
want to bake into the heating area of the oven,

(11:45):
let it bake, and you push it through the other
the other side, the cooling chamber, and then it comes
out the other arm. Everyone Josh has had his eyes
closed that entire time, and it worked. I really painted
a great picture in your mind's eye. M yes, uh yeah,
so that's what what's going on. You had the two bulbs,
um and in fact, let's go ahead and take a

(12:06):
break there. Okay, nice litt Cliffhanger. When we come back,
I'll redescribe the easy bake oven again. It sounds good,

(12:30):
all right. We were at one bulb, right, yeah, I'm sorry, No,
we were at two bulbs so long ago I couldn't remember.
I know there was a full ada. But then what
they did was they figured if they just engineered this
thing to distribute heat and whole heat a little better,
almost like a convection of it. Yeah, exactly, like a

(12:50):
convection of him, that they could go down to one bulb. Yeah.
There was a dude named Charles hold On, I really
want to Yeah, Charles Cummings, Charles one bulb Cummings. Yeah,
that's what he was known as. Charles Cummings was a
designer at Kenner and I think in the late seventies.
He designed the interior of the oven so that the

(13:13):
bulb one bulb created confection current, so it cooked just
as well as two bold, but you just needed one.
Um and he owns the patent to that, which is
the way it should be. Yeah, he was the design
He came up with this pretty rare to Kennor. Of course,
I'm sure had an exclusive license to it, but I'm
sure he got like a decent amount of money from

(13:35):
that license agreement. That is the way it should be.
He also created the patent um Or he held the
patent for the add on popcorn maker that you could
put onto the easy bake oven. Too good for him,
good for you. Charles Cummings, Charles one bulb Cummings. He
probably lives on top of the mountain somewhere and on
a mountain of money. Uh so, all right, you're down

(13:57):
to one bulb thanks to Charlie Cummings. They initially wanted
to call this in nineteen sixty three when it was
two bulbs within debut. Yeah, right out of the gate,
they wanted to call it November of sixty three the
Safety Bake Oven, because they really wanted to drive this
home was that it was super safe, and the regulatory
bodies were like you can't. You haven't even sold one yet,

(14:19):
Like we don't, We're not sure if this is going
to kill kids. You burned a dozen monkeys during the
product testing trial. Oh that's so awful. Um, but you
can't call it that yet because we don't know yet
whether it's truly safe. Go ahead and sell them, but
just don't still call it safe the safety bake oven.
So they're like, well, what about easy? And they're like,
are we still talking about this, We're done with you,

(14:39):
go away and um they said. They were like, okay, fine,
we'll call it the easy Bake Oven then, and they
sold it as the Easy Bake Oven and it sold
out immediately. They sold it, so November is right before
the Christmas season, actually in the Christmas season, I think
even back then, and they made a little more than
half a million units and told them all, like before Christmas, yeah,

(15:02):
for which is expensive. That would be about a hundred
and thirty dollars today. No, yeah, that's a that's an
expensive toy. Wow. And if you look at the thing.
I saw a picture of one that's for sale on
eBay for really cheap. I think it was like thirty
bucks or something. Really it was unused in the box,
still needed to be assembled. But if you look at it,
You're like, that thing looks like a death trap. It

(15:23):
looks like the four pinto of children's toys from the sixties,
you know, like the sharp metal edges. Yeah, you're like, like,
that's what it looks like, like like the baby strollers
we were pushed around. Yeah. Remember that that Dana Kroyd
SNLS get from years ago with the dangerous Christmas toys,
And there was one called the Bag of Glass so great, uh,

(15:45):
and that's all it was just a bag of shards
of glass. So yeah, they sold a half a million
and then they're like, we gotta make a lot more
of these for next year. Yeah, because this is back
at a time when toys didn't do that very often.
You know, it's like every Christmas now people are like, well,
what's the toy we should go fight other parents for
tell us? Yeah, because I'm training in the ring. This

(16:07):
is when it right. This is when it happened organically,
when you put out a toy and if it became
like the fight worthy toy, that was a few and
far between things. The easy Bake oven was the fight
worthy toy right out of the gate. Yeah. So in
year two, I think they made about one point five
million sold all those and here was here's the little
bit of genius from Kenner is Uh, anytime you can

(16:30):
sell a supplementary product to the big thing, then you're
really cooking with gasnically Gilette Razor model. I think it
was King Gilette who came up with that. Yeah, So
what they did was they sold uh mixes, you know,
these little instant mixes that you would pour and it
would make a little creddit cake. And they had twenty
five of these at first, And we're selling those like

(16:53):
crazy because if you're a kid. If if you're a kid,
you want all those, you're like, well, I haven't try
the strawberry cake yet. Plus also, it's a it's not
like you're putting this in like a book like some
baseball cars, and you're like, well, I've got this one.
I don't need. You eat that thing and you need
another thing to replace it, and you poop it out

(17:13):
and you're not gonna eat the poop again. You're going
to go buy another one. And that was the genius
of the other genius idea of this whole thing. There
was a third genius idea to Kenna did this so right?
Not just no, the advertising. So remember this is kids
emulating grown ups. That was their thing, um it. They

(17:37):
advertised not just two kids through like archies comics, but
they advertised directly to their parents too. There were ads
for the easy Bake Oven on I Love Lucy and
on Hogan's Heroes. According to This This Collector's Weekly article, and
in these ads, if you look at a lot of
old ads and even some of the newer ads too
for easy bake Oven, it's a mom and a daughter, right,

(18:00):
and the parent is like, oh, this is something we
can do together. I love baking. It's basically my whole life.
I live in nine and I'm a woman, so I
would love to share that with my daughter. Maybe she's
old enough to have an easy bake oven herself. And
that definitely helped propel sales for sure, because it's not
just kids going on an easy bake Oven, it's the

(18:22):
parents going that'd be a great thing to do with
my kid. Yeah. And of course, as people evolved and
people became more woke over time, even though that word
wasn't used, um enlightened, maybe it became a bit of
a problem with gender roles and like this is for
moms and daughters their pink and that's what you're supposed
to do, is be in the kitchen baking for the men. Yeah,

(18:44):
I mean very famously, the easy bake ovens always ended
with the disclaimer like this toy is not for boys. Yeah,
it didn't really, but essentially it was like that was this,
that was what was coming through. And the weird thing
is is far as as like legendary iconic a toy
as the easy bake oven was as gender roles and um, yeah,

(19:07):
as gender roles evolved, I mean this was we're talking
like the early seventies when this really started to become
like a thing. The easy bake oven did not evolve
with it. As we will see. It wasn't until the
like early two thousand's that they started to like respond
to that kind of thing. And I saw an ad
for two thousand fourteen not a boy in sight, all

(19:28):
girls and um it just dancing around like the girliest
easy bake oven you could possibly imagine. They actually got
more girly as time went on and more girl focused.
Um as gender roles went on, which is really weird
to me, not just non responsive but almost like no,

(19:50):
we're going the opposite way. Yeah, And then early two
thousands Hasbro who uh you know, they bought out Kenner,
eventually makers of the classic Snoopye snowcob machine. I never
had one of those. You have one of those? No
neighbor did, okay, um, but you got to eat some
of that sweet see sugar ice. There was nothing like
the taste of I think the cherry one, I can't remember,

(20:13):
but it was just the greatest snow cone you could
possibly have. And that's until you had a shave ice
later and you're like, oh, this is a lot better still.
Number one raining champ really Number two is blue raspberry
slush Puppy. Yeah. See what I would always do was
um slurp that sweet liquid and that would be left
with just some faintly colored kind of just ice. Oh yeah, no,
I know. It was the problem with it for sure,

(20:35):
But if you did it right and you just kind
of let it settle, you got you know, through the
nasty stuff first when you got to the bottom, then
you got to the true like hyper hyper dense snow
cone experience. Yeah. I could never do that. I'd still
have problems regulating my like hot fudged to ice cream
ratio when eating a Sunday. Oh yeah, I just won't

(20:55):
even do it anymore. So you do all the hot
fudge first, and then you're left to some crutty ice cream. Yep,
that's I mean, that's standard creuddy delicious ice cream, right
this ice cream. That's some people around the world would
kill for his cud. He doesn't have any more fudge, dude.
I've been on a fifteen year campaign to convince Emily
that vanilla ice cream is like a legit flavor. I

(21:18):
think she's she still thinks that vanilla ice cream is
just like unflavored ice meal. Yeah, it's like it's the
one without the flavor added. Right now, vanilla is it
really delicious? It is? It is. It's subtle vanilla bean
ice cream like true flex so good. So in early
two thousand, they finally, like you said, tried in a
very ham fisted way to get boys involved with the

(21:41):
the que you easy bake queasy bake is that what
it is? Took me a second to because Q uses
separate word. So okay, now, so the queasy bake oven
and the mixer rader for you boys, you can make
mud and crud cakes and the lar delicious cocoon keys,
and you know, not like, hey, just bake something good

(22:04):
because anyone can bake. Yeah, anyone can bake. And they
didn't like the girls don't don't use that one. Yeah,
it was it was only boys that showed up in
these ads. They're like, we really need to get boys involved.
How can we do that? Oh, we'll make one specifically
four boys. That's like they're making cruddy cakes. I mean,
I know they're just trying to sell stuff, but when

(22:25):
in these meetings, in these marketing meetings that you just
can't help but think they're it's like a bunch of
like eighty five year old men. It's our it's our Senate. Yeah,
it's in there right there, like screaming and pounding and
yelling at each other about the idea of like selling
this to boys. Oh man, well after that, I feel
like we should probably take a break. Yeah, we'll go
to our senate chambers and regroup right after this. Alright.

(23:07):
So in N seven, the Easy Bake up and is
selling like uh hot cakes. Literally, General Mills buys Kinner
uh and they did a couple of genius things. They
they partnered because they were General Mills. They had no
problem because they owned Betty Crocker as well. I assume
um launching Betty Crocker branded mixes, and then later on

(23:29):
they got into licensing deals with McDonald's and Pizza Hut.
Because here's the thing. You can bake anything in an
easy week oven because it's just a little oven. Yeah,
you can make pizza and you can make you don't
have to buy these mixes. You can just bake cookies
that you made from scratch. Yeah, and there's like a
lot of um recipes online easy bake oven recipes. Yeah.

(23:51):
They actually don't taste like garbage, so um. Yeah. They
did have a huge line of mixes though, and they
sold more than a hundred million of them over the
over the year. That's how they get you. But I
mean they there there were recipes for mixes for candy bars,
pecanan brittle, popcorn, bubblegum. You can bake your own bubblegum. Interesting,

(24:13):
it is interesting. I would have tried that for sure.
I want to see bubblegum come out in like a
brownie pan. Yeah, I'd be like, I want some of
that bubblegum, like amazing a cotton candy machine, now that
I remember what it would just spin sugar and you would, Oh,
I know what they do. I wanted one. That thing
was probably dangerous, was probably like a nuclear centerfuge. What

(24:34):
what was interesting about those are fascinating to me was
like the cotton candy. Um this, Oh it's not called
it's like not the web sugar or something like that. Um. Yeah,
I want to say web, but that's not either. You
it's not really visible in the machine, but when you
stick in the little cone, it just builds up on

(24:55):
it like it's like it's just coming out of another
dimension into this one, like coming out of a spider.
But it's awesome to see a pink and pink and
blue spiders. But man, I had to go out yesterday two. Uh.
I still have my pickup truck then, because I just
kept it because it was paid for, and I still
moved and hall stuff occasionally had to move. Something justified

(25:16):
to me. I had to move something yesterday and I
went out and that was the most beautiful huge spider
web from a tree down attached to the rear tailgate
of my truck like chuck with this big spider right
in the middle. And I was like, oh, man, I
just felt so bad. I didn't know what to do,
so you just put in reverse and pretended nothing. He
didn't see anything. No, actually plucked it off a little

(25:38):
by little because I want to ensure his safety. And
the web just goes crumbling down into a long, you know,
skinny string, and he climbs right up to the tree
and I was just like, I'm really sorry. He's like, oh,
I'm sure you are to see you. He tried to
spit venom into my eyeball, Like what do you what
do you need your truck for? And You're like, I
gotta go get peanut butter. Is like, oh good, thank

(26:02):
you for ruining thirty hours of my work a giant
vat of peanut butter that would only fit in my truck. Um,
all right, so let's let's fash forward here too, uh
the modern times in two thousand seven, the Energy Independence
and Security Act, when the government said, by two thousand
twelve light bulbs have to increase their efficiency by so

(26:25):
bye bye incandescent bulb. Yeah, so let me just say something.
Let me set that up to Over the years, the
easy bake oven had just remained a steady seller for
Kenner and then has Bro, and the design had been
basically the same and went from two bulbs to one bulb,
but it was this closed box where the heating element was,
where there was a slot on the side. Remember I

(26:47):
went through the whole thing, pushed it in and it
came out the cooling chamber on the other side. Um.
But really the design was the same. The outward look
changed like it went from the weird its own thing
to the late seventies and early eighties, it started to
resemble them microwave and then in in response to this
change in light bulb requirements, Easy Baked did a redesign

(27:09):
in two thousand and six and for the first time ever,
the Easy Bake Oven actually looked like an oven, like
a stove, had little like fake burners on the top.
It looked like a stove. And it was actually a
front loader to where there was a like a slot
in the front of the Easy Bake oven and that's
where you put the thing in, and that's what you

(27:30):
actually pulled it out from, too, and it went right
into the heating element. UM and they replaced the light
bulb because again so long light bulb because of the
energy act um with an actual heating element, a ceramic
heating element like an oven. So they made an oven.

(27:50):
But then when they made the oven, they redesigned this
thing so that you could put your fingers right into
the oven while it was baking at its hottest temperature.
And of course kids immediately started doing that. How did they?
How did that one slip past? No idea? I mean,
that just doesn't make any sense at all. So in
the end, I think, what what close to two kids

(28:10):
ended up with like second and third degree burns? One
partial amputation of a finger, yeah, because kids would get
their fingers stuck in it, right, and it's just and
then some kids got their fingers stuck in it while
it was he hot, and yes, they were getting huge burns.
So um Hasbro was like, well, we'll do a recall,

(28:31):
and they recalled five thousand, I think ultimately a million
of these things they recalled. First they tried to say,
here's a little fixed Yeah, here's a retrofitted piece. It's
really easy to snap it on, and I'll solve them everything.
And apparently it did solve everything. They're like, why didn't
you make it that way to begin with? Right, But
most parents were not, like they didn't have their ears

(28:52):
out that there was a recall of their Easy Bake oven,
and so their kids, the kids that kept getting burned
and and finally Hasbro was like, just them back. So
there's a recall of a million Easy Bake ovens from
that two thousand and six redesigned. There's a huge toy
for them, like too. If that would have ruined the
Easy Bake Oven, that would have been a big, big deal.
So what they did was they temporarily went back to

(29:14):
an old design featuring a light bulb two while they
redesigned it to the new version. So, uh, then they
came out in two thousand and eleven with that that
really ugly designed what's called the Easy Bake Ultimate Oven.
I'm looking at it now and the things, Yeah, it does.
It looks terrible. It's horrible. It's super It looks like
it's on the go or something like that. I don't

(29:36):
like it. It looks like a weird toaster oven. Yeah,
but it's sort of. It looks like it's trying to
look futuristic and modern, which never ends up looking like that. No,
it doesn't. But they also made it pink and purple,
super girly that ads were girl targeted. Yet there's flowers
on it, and again they were like, Nope, this is
for girls. Boys don't play with this. So in two thousand,

(30:02):
I think two thousand thirteen, there was a girl named
Um McKenna Pope who is just a hero of hero
She's amazing. I saw an interview with her on CNN.
She's just so like self possessed and intelligent and like
well spoken, but also like a kid, no know where

(30:24):
she's a kid. She's just amazing, one of those clearly
reincarnated um. And she went on. She started a petition
to get Hasbro to make a gender neutral version of
It's Easy Bake Oven because her little brother Um like
to bake but realized that the Easy Bake Oven was
for girls. She wanted him to be able to bake,

(30:46):
so she said, Hasbro, why don't you make one this
gender neutral and got something like fifty thousand signatures for
her petition, and Hasbro came out with a new version
of the Easy Bake Ultimate Oven, which was just a
black version of it black and I think Silver surprised
it wasn't like our brush stainless model to emulate, you know, kitchens. Yeah,
she's she's probably almost twenty years old. Now, yeah, one,

(31:08):
what she's doing, mckinnipope or are you out there? She's
some sort of like consumer and protection lawyer all that
probably so, I hope. So. Uh. Two thousand six they
go into the National Toy Hall of Fame, the same
year that disastrous redesign. Yeah, they they got in just
under the wire. Yeah, we can't take it back. I'm

(31:29):
trying to look here, and they're from their very on
website some of the landmark years. Uh. And it is
kind of funny that emulated the styles of the time,
unless they were just doing pink. Like in sixty nine
they premiered the Avocado Green. The very next year was
Harvest Gold. It's very good metallic p We'd say that
a lot in our else. Um. Oh, they had a

(31:52):
potato chip maker. Do we mention that? No? Three, the
easy Baked Potato chip Maker. And then in seventy eight
they finally started putting a fake digital clock on it
that always read twelve thirty Okay, not for twenty. You
see that a lot in as a joke, and like

(32:14):
the pothead joke. Yeah, but like you'll see an alarm
clock ad and like uh, skymall or something and I'll
say four twenty because the publishers aren't paying attention to
it or they don't care. Sure. I remember years ago
when we used to have a lot of illustrations on
how stuff works and had two in the house illustrators

(32:34):
that I won't name, and remember one of them drew
a like a park scene for me and the tree
clearly had a marijuana leaf like embedded in it. And
I was like, hey, man, you can't do that, and
he was like, oh, I was completely an accident. I
was like, man, I wasn't born yesterday. I've seen a
pot leaf before. I mean, I thought it was funny,

(32:54):
but like, you know, yeah, I couldn't do that. Do
you got anything else? I don't think so. Easy bake oven,
mac and cheese you can bake. Oh. In two thousand
three they they introduced the real meal oven and you
could That's when you could do like French fries and
pizza and mac and cheese and stuff. I think that
was the predecessor to the ceramic heating element that they

(33:17):
eventually reads the easy Bacon in two thousands six. Good stuff,
Good stuff. If you want a nice blast from the past,
just type in like easy bake oven commercials. There's one
from that was just perfect. Was it rad? No, it
was pretty rad. Okay, it was like Carpenter's era Gotcha,

(33:37):
which is not rad but still lovely. Yes, I love
the Carpenters, me too. Um. Well, if you want to
know more about easy bake ovens, or the Carpenters or
the snoopy snowcomb machine, just go onto the internet. It's
a vast repository of stuff like that. And since I
said that, it's time for listener mail. Hey guys. UM
a freelance writer who works remotely. So I've been writing

(34:00):
and traveling the world for the past year and a half.
It's been wild. Since I've been traveling alone, it can
get lonely, but from Mexico City to Bali to Tokyo,
you guys have been with me, keeping me company, making
me laugh, teach me all kinds of cool facts. As
a content writer, also feel a connection to y'all. We
both have to research seemingly mundane topics sometimes and discovered

(34:20):
the cool, interesting things about them, present them in a
palatable way. People sometimes laugh when I'm telling that I'm
writing something like the history of the egg McMuffin or
the best month to buy a mattress. But I just
point to your podcast is a sterling example of how
gyms and surprises lie within even the most unassuming topics. Yeah,
I have you guys ever considered doing a show on

(34:41):
digital nomadding. I know it's becoming increasingly popular as more
companies race remote working. I'm in a cafe and medellin Medaine,
Columbia right now, and there are five digital nomads tapping
away in their laptops as we speak. They would beat
me up if they new I just referred to them
as digital nomad. The future is location independent. I say

(35:04):
thanks again for being so awesome. It's a short term
dream of mine to digital nomad over to a country
where you're doing a live show by you guys a
drink awesome. If you do read this on the air,
please give a shout out to Mark Alexander, who insisted
that I keep listening to you guys, even even after
I was initially slightly turned off by all of your
sides and off tracking happens to a lot of people,
And that's funny because we had a lot of those today.

(35:26):
You know that reminds me of a a totally unrelated story. Uh, he,
she says, now I very much learned to appreciate those
He would burst into tears and I would too. So
thank you Mark Alexander for turning on your friend. Maria
Christina Ladonde. Thanks a lot, beautiful name. Yeah, I'm sorry,
laalone day, Maria Christina Laonda um and I hope that

(35:53):
your buddy did just purst out into tears. That'd be amazing.
It's pretty neat. Thanks for that email. If you want
to get into touch of this, you can find us
on the webit Stuff you Should Know dot com. Check
out our social links there, and if you like, send
an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.

(36:16):
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