The Evolution of the Easy Bake Oven

by lisa, Dec 31, 2009, at 10:33 am

My adorable niece got an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas this year and I was shocked. Shocked!

No, not because of gendered gift giving, socialization, blah blah blah…

I don’t know where you would get that idea.

Instead, I was shocked by what cooking apparently looks like in 2009. But let me start at the beginning…

The first Easy Bake Oven was released by Hasbro in 1963 (history here). It looked like a range with a stove top and an oven:

6a00d83452989a69e200e5503ce76d8833-800wi

It looked like this, with minor changes in color and amenities, for a while.

1964:

1971:

Then, 1978. It turns out, in 1975, for the first time, sales of microwave ovens exceeded those of gas ranges. And, what do you know, the Easy Bake Oven was suddenly a microwave with a digital clock:

1983:

Presumably, between 1963 and 1978, what cooking looked like changed dramatically and the evolution of the Easy Bake Oven reflected that. This is what surprised me when I saw my niece’s oven.

Ironically, this year’s Oven is painted in the original turquoise, as a nod to 1963, but it is still clearly a microwave:

easyBake

So that’s technological and socioeconomic change as signified by the Easy Bake Oven.

(Women still do all the cooking though. Duh!)

Comments

edward 10:57 am on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply

I actually got an Easy Bake oven for Christmas this year (family joke) and the cake was fairly delicious for being powder and water.

Interesting look at how it has developed over the years. I remember it being pink in the 90s, though.
- Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist 11:03 am on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply
  
  wait wait… WAIT– Easy Bake ovens actually work? I’ve never gotten or played with one as a kid. I always figured they were fake and plastic.
  - Meg 11:18 am on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply
    
    Yeah, they come with special cake mix packs that you can use to make teeny tiny cupcakes/desserts. There’s also a boy version of the ez-bake oven in which you “bake” rubber bugs. Of course.
    - Joanna 3:15 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply
      
      There’s also a “girl” version of that “Creepy Crawlers” (rubber bug) oven where you bake colored rubbery shapes that you attach to barrettes, earring clips, rings, etc. to make jewelry.
      - E 6:00 pm on December 31, 2009 | #
        
        I vaguely remember earlier versions being dangerous and burning kids. I think they used a really hot light bulb to bake. But it is highly possible I am remembering an urban legend. Or maybe I just burned myself.
      - K 6:36 pm on December 31, 2009 | #
        
        As a little girl, I was so insulted by Creepy Crawlers commercials. The ads were pretty misogynistic, playing up the “scare your sister with obviously fake bugs” angle.
      - Gertrude 6:09 pm on January 2, 2010 | #
        
        I had the Easy Bake oven and the Creepy Crawlers. I loved them both.
      - Meg 11:29 am on January 3, 2010 | #
        
        Oh my. I only knew about the first two, since my brother got one and I got the other (and then we traded ). Clearly, they now need to make a boy version of the girl version of the boy version of the E-Z Bake Oven. You could make rubber man-jewelry, or something.
    - karinova 3:45 am on January 2, 2010 | # | Reply
      
      The “special” cake mix is a total rip!
      I had one of these (a hand-me-down from a friend whose room overflowed with toys) way back in the day, and my mom was not about to buy those overpriced little packets. We used regular cake mix mixed with ginger ale, which worked just fine for some reason (chemistry can be scary!). Just spoon out some powder and mix in some fresh (ie: bubbly) ginger ale until it looks to be the right consistency.
      
      They were actually pretty tasty!
      Mmm. Cake.
ani 11:21 am on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply

i had an easy bake oven when i was a little kid (in the nineties). it was magenta and purple, and also looked somewhat like a microwave. fun times.
Craig 11:27 am on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply

My niece got an Easy Bake a couple of years ago, and, as she was staying with us for a few days, I got a chance to put the thing through its paces.

My first reaction is that anything that teaches kids that they can cook, and that cooking can be “play,” is probably a Good Thing, out of proportion to whatever quibbles I have. Pre-packaged, pre-cooked food is destroying us and our planet, not to put too fine a point on it.

But still…

Of course, there is the microwave styling. I was just baffled by this, especially the _fake_ digital clock that is nothing more than a decal. And all the knobs and buttons that don’t do anything. I guess that’s how Mommies and Daddies make food these days: put it in the microwave. So that’s what the kids want to emulate. It puts me in mind of my rather younger sister-in-law, who actually boasted to us once, “You can just call me Betty Crocker,” on the occasion of her “cooking” a frozen, store-bought lasagna by removing the plastic sheeting and putting it in a 350 degree oven until it bubbled. She was positively _beaming._ Bless–as they say down here–her heart.

Then too: Easy Bake cakes can be readily fabricated out of flour, sugar, oil, and maybe some chocolate and vanilla. See, for instance, http://www.budget101.com/kids.htm#Easy_Bake_Mixes Real cooking! Kids can learn about ingredients, ratios, all kinds of stuff. But does Hasbro include any such recipes with the oven? No prizes for guessing correctly. What they do is sell a huge array of prepackaged mixes, co-branded with various cartoon characters. Sigh. We can’t let the best be enemy to the good, I guess.

Can boys play with an Easy Bake, now that it’s cool to be a macho chef with an explosive temper? Well, the base model is clearly for girls, but let no one accuse Hasbro of neglecting half the population. But boys don’t want to make _sissy food_, do they? And so I give you the Queasy Bake Cookerator:

http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/QueasyBake.html

No longer in production, evidently. Surprised?

The last thing that got me thinking was that incandescent light bulb that provides the necessary heat. If we found ourselves with a new Easy Bake oven today, we’d have to make a special trip to the hardware store. I wonder what they’re going to do with this toy in the era of high-efficiency, low heat light bulbs?

Perhaps they’ll take another step down the road of American cuisine, and sell pre-cooked, individually wrapped snack cakes. You open the wrapper, put the cake on the little plastic plate, and slide it into the Easy Bake oven which is now just a bright plastic shell that has no working parts and does nothing at all. Whenever you like, you then slide the plate back out of the oven and enjoy the tasty treat you “made!” And the radical do-it-yourself parents will make web sites about how you don’t _have_ to buy the Easy Bake brand snack cakes: you can just buy Hostess Twinkies at a fraction of the cost and cut the ends off so they fit in the Easy Bake plate.

And I will rub my temples and pour a double Bourbon. But, then again, I’d probably have done that anyway.
Bri 11:40 am on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply

I suppose it’s worth mentioning that Hasbro did produce an “range-style” Easy-Bake with a front door (like a traditional oven) in 2005 – it was recalled after too many kids got badly burnt (250 recorded cases according to the recall release), leaving only the microwave-like side-loader on the market.

That said, I had an EBO in the early 90s, and never really considered the fact that it looked more like a microwave than an oven. Frankly, by the time I was old enough to use the EBO (9 or 10), I was old enough to use the actual oven/stove and learn to cook actual meals (splitting the job with my older brother, who’d been cooking for a few years).
- Bri 11:43 am on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply
  
  Whoops – tried to include the press-release for the recall but failed. Here’s the link (with picture): http://www.hasbro.com/customer-service/recall/Recall-Easy-Bake-Oven.cfm
- Craig 12:20 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply
  
  The side-loading design with the pusher-stick (rather than fingers) is a wonderful safety feature, and you certainly won’t hear me make a peep about it. I think it’s one of the best things about the toy. But side-loading or front-loading still basically leaves you with a plastic box. How do you _style_ that box–that’s the question. Real-world home microwaves are of course front-loading devices with a door; the same form factor as real-world home ovens. So you could certainly make an Easy Bake look like a true cooking device if you wanted to.
- Cute Bruiser 2:38 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply
  
  That was my experience too! I asked for an EBO, but was too young. Kept asking and by the time my dad felt I was mature enough to use one safely he just figured, “Heck, she’s old enough to actually learn to cook REAL food” and so he just started having me help in the kitchen.
tblaizey 12:17 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply

I had one growing up, and I loved it even though it was pink and the plastic thing that you use to push the cake in and out was a pain and I tipped the pans over inside the over quite frequently.

The microwave symbolizes fast pace lifestyles where moms dont have time to cook in the oven or actually make whole meals from scratch any more.

Im interested to see how the actual mixes have changed over the years. Are they any different?
- K 6:39 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply
  
  Uh oh…”where _moms_ don’t have time to cook”?
  - Emma 12:43 pm on January 1, 2010 | # | Reply
    
    Yeah, all these lazy moms using the microwave instead of spending hours over the stove
Eline 12:23 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply

You have these actual ovens that look like microwaves, too, you know.
- E 6:03 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply
  
  a microwave is probably safer than an EBO.
- MeToo 2:33 pm on January 1, 2010 | # | Reply
  
  I’d like to have one of those. Traditional ovens are poorly designed for people with disabilities or other mobility impairments.
cynthia 1:16 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply

The final picture reminds me a lot more of my toaster oven than it does of my microwave.
- lsmsrbls 5:38 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply
  
  Yeah, it didn’t even occur to me that it might still be a microwave until I read the description. When I saw the picture, I though, “Oh, so now they look like toaster ovens! What an interesting progression!”
  
  But I can’t really see that much from the picture.
Sabriel 2:40 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply

Hmm. I have a toaster oven that I use for baking when I don’t want to heat up the house. It works pretty well, although probably not quite AS well as a real oven. I’d probably teach a kid to use that, if I wanted to teach him/her with something small and electric. It’s great for mixing up a small portion of something sweet (cookies, scones, muffins) that I don’t want to have a ton of around the house.
Sue 3:33 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply

I think mine had a light bulb in it. My father was a far better and more enthusiastic cook than my mother so having an EBO didn’t hurt me any.
Kelly 7:12 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply

I’ve never owned an EBO, and I haven’t owned a microwave in years. I am behind the times!
Janey 9:02 pm on December 31, 2009 | # | Reply

I vaguely remember, must have been in the sixties or early seventies having a cooking thing which created monsters that you ate. I don’t remember how it was marketed though.
Kate 1:16 am on January 1, 2010 | # | Reply

Turqouise is apparently the ‘colour of the year’, according to pantone. So it’s not retro, any more than the general zeitgeist is – it’s up-to-the-minute trendy.
not very creative 12:59 pm on January 1, 2010 | # | Reply

I’m 18, so I had the pink one that looked like a microwave. My dad cooked for my family when I was little (and by “cooked” I mean he put frozen lasagna in the microwave or ordered Chinese food), so I don’t think it ever occurred to me that anyone would use anything other than a microwave to cook. Our oven was only used on special occasions, when my mom cooked.

I don’t think I ever cared much about the Easy Bake Oven. I used it a couple of times when I got it, just to test it out, and then my mother would have to encourage me to use it when I didn’t really want to. Oddly, my little brother started using it when he was that age, along with the plastic kitchen set from when I was younger (something I also didn’t care much about), and now that he’s old enough to do “real” cooking (14), he wants to be a chef. I think it’s cool that we both defy gender rules despite having had them beaten into our brains since we left the womb.
karinova 4:08 am on January 2, 2010 | # | Reply

I remember once visiting a friend at her dorm room, and being amazed when she got up and pulled a teeny pan of brownies out of the microwave. I’d never seen anything baked in a microwave before, but they were excellent. So this microwave styling actually kinda works, I guess?

But yeah. Like most kids, I grew bored with the fiddly little pans and all of that. I’d started baking with the real oven around the same time I got my EZ Bake Oven (which is why it was given to me), and I quickly decided that the real thing was better. (More cake, you know?)

Brownies or not, the microwave-like EZ Bake Oven makes me think of all those people who should be able to take care of themselves, but can’t so much as cook a meal, and have to depend on microwaved Hot Pockets for dine-in sustenance. For example, around the same time as the brownie trip, I discovered that another classmate of mine didn’t know how to cook pasta. (“Seriously?! OMG. You boil it. In water.”) I was freakin’ astonished. This dude had graduated high school, and was headed to an Ivy League college, but as far as I could tell, he couldn’t feed himself. (He was… of a slightly different socio-economic class.) Even when I was in junior high, I remember passing the old, many-years-disused home ec classrooms and thinking, “um, I wouldn’t mind taking Home Ec; I’m going to need to know that.” (There were also disused shop rooms; I wanted to take Shop too, for the same reason.) But someone decided that wasn’t important, I guess. We have Hamburger Helper now, so…
sciamanna 2:31 pm on January 2, 2010 | # | Reply

Microwaves are less common in Italy, and they started appearing in any number much later than in the US. They’re also used for heating rather than cooking, mostly. So I got curious and looked for the current version of “Dolce Forno” (the Italian name of the toy). I didn’t find any illustrations of the microwave style. I did find a “1990″ version which is the conventional oven style: http://www.ecdl-forli.it/object/DolceForno2-.jpg
Crimson 8:38 am on January 3, 2010 | # | Reply

I guess I never would have noticed that the EBO is actually a microwave rather than an oven… here in Japan (where most people have tiny kitchens and therefore no space for an oven) the two are basically the same thing. If you take out the turn-table you can use the “oven” settings. Mind you I’m still too afraid to try using my microwave-oven to bake cookies or something, but apparently it can be done.
karinova 3:13 pm on January 4, 2010 | # | Reply

Ha! Just happened to be surfing the web and found this: Holly Hobbie toy oven

It’s a Hollie Hobbie-branded version of the EBO, from 1980.
The super old-fashioned styling caught my eye. Compare to the 1978 EBO above!
(Note: the HH character lived in the early 1800s: Holly Hobby, classic version).

I remember Holly Hobbie, but not this particular product. For some reason, I find it funny that it included pie mixes (again: chemistry can be scary!). Somehow pie really does seem more old-fashioned than cake.
Julie 2:35 pm on January 15, 2010 | # | Reply

My niece asked for and receive this year several products by “Girl Gourmet,” which are essentially Easy-Bake ovens with a ramped up semi-Bratz aesthetic. She asked me to get them for her but I refused on principle; luckily for her, her father’s family succumbed. The “food” that can be produced is much more complicated than what can be done with the Easy Bake Oven – as in, candy jewelry and fondant cakes. She loves them.
http://www.mygirlgourmet.com/
E 4:25 pm on February 24, 2010 | # | Reply

When I was a kid I discovered that I could make teeny tiny cookies with my easy bake oven just using my mom’s cookie recipes. Spoon them out into dime sized lumps in the easy bake pan and away they go. We had dozens of tiny chocolate chip cookies before they were invented by nabisco.