This summer, my wife decided to go on a fruit-smoothie binge. Suddenly, my rather bedraggled, 24-year-old Oster blender with its melted plastic vents caused by ice cream overloads back in my college days was getting a lot of use. A new blender was in order. The result of a trip to our local Lowe's hardware store was a new Cuisinart SmartPower Premier™ 600-Watt Blender, and the trusty old Oster went on a sad journey to the local landfill.

Enthusiastically unpacking the new Cuisinart blender revealed its austere but sharp-looking brushed metallic base and heavy glass decanter. Absent were the milieu of cheesy buttons and useless speed settings, instead replaced by a digital timer and six small buttons: “On,” Off,” “High,” “Low,” “Pulse,” and “Ice.” All this, along with its high price and the box label's reassurance of a “powerful 600 Watt motor” gave me high expectations. Everything about this machine screamed, “Professional!” And then, my wife actually used it.

The first thing she noticed was that there was no milkshake blade included with the unit, only the standard slicing blade. Then it became clear that we really needed Goldilocks to tighten the blade-holder to the decanter “just right”...a little too loose, or a little too tight, and it leaked everywhere. Fortunately, we discovered this while testing the blender with a load of tap water. But then all was overlooked when came the real reason for buying our beautiful new appliance as chunks of frozen fruit went in, and the proper buttons were pushed.

“PHEW!!!” Was that the smell of burning nylon insulation wafting into my nasal passages? We looked at each other as the little motor-that-could struggled to make its way through the bits of frozen strawberry and banana. “Not to worry!” I exclaimed as I pressed the button marked “High,” and then finally the one marked, “Ice.” “It's just new.” The sound of straining gradually gave way to a steady groan as the blender did its job. Then worried looks gave way to smiles as we poured two glasses full and retired to a more pleasantly odoriferous patio garden to enjoy our cool drinks. That was July 27, 2009. Skip ahead exactly one month...

Arriving home from a long day of work, I was greeted by my wife with a batch of wonderful cheesecake cookies that she had made for fun on a day off...along with an interesting smell in the kitchen. The smell was like, yep, burned nylon motor-winding insulation. I was soon informed that I was in fact not hallucinating this smell either, as the little motor-that-could had spewed forth masses of curling white smoke while mixing the cheesy goodness in my wife's cookies. And that, apparently, was its last gasp.

Shipping the heavy base off for a repair would have been a costly proposition, and it barely seemed worthwhile just to have the blender's wimpy motor replaced with with another of the same. And considering all the inefficient blending due to the lack of a milkshake blade, and the mess left on the base by the oft leaky decanter, my wife wasn't particularly enthusiastic about waiting two weeks to return the same blender to service. Fortunately, the Cuisinart had given up on the last day of Lowe's return policy. So a half-hour before closing time on August 27, 2009, a Lowe's clerk stuck a “defective merchandise” tag on the blender, and our first and last experience with the Cuisinart brand officially ended after just 30 days.

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