Worst hot-air popper I've used
Written: Aug 21 '03
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Pros: No oil necessary; cheap.
Cons: Only a fraction of kernels pop; dangerous spray pattern from popper
The Bottom Line: Salton's popcorn popper is a paragon of poor product design.
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| sjdorn's Full Review: Salton PC2 Popcorn Maker |
I thought hot-air popcorn poppers were foolproof to design. You shoot hot air around the bottom, have a vertical tube and a diverting top large enough to keep the unpopped kernels in the popper, and include a tray to melt butter. These poppers were most pop!-ular 20 years ago. With the pop!-ularity of single-serving microwavable popcorn, there are fewer hot-air poppers available and no incentive for manufacturers to focus on quality. Such is the sad state of our civilization when one can only find a single model of a hot-air popper in a store.
I've used a variety of hot-air poppers over the last 20 years, and I had to purchase a new one recently when the plastic on my favorite gave out after 15 years. I saw the Toastmaster popper on a shelf at a store (whose name I'll hide to protect the guilty purchaser for the chain), and I thought, "Okay. How hard can it be to make a popcorn popper?"
I guess it's harder than it looks. I brought it home and tried it. The top tray is both a measuring and a butter-melting device. I filled the tray with kernels and overturned it into the cavity below. My mistake! A number of kernels were bounced out by the baffling around the center cavity. Okay. Try again. Take the whole plastic top off and then pour the kernels into the guts of the popper. There. That's a design flaw, but a minor one I can accommodate.
Then I placed a large bowl under the opening, turned on the popper, and waited. Pop! Out came one popped kernel and about 5-7 unpopped ones. Pop! More unpopped (and hot) kernels came out, sprayed around my kitchen by the AK-47 of hot-air poppers. Pop! Pop! Skittle! Popcorn and kernels were making my countertop and some of my floor look like a Jackson Pollack art piece. I would have been able to return the bowl to its shelf had not, by entirely random chance, a few bits of popcorn and a handful of kernels somehow landed inside it.
So the popper is largely useless and potentially dangerous, since the popper sprays out hot unpopped kernels in a variety of directions. Hot-air poppers inevitably have a few strays. But this one has far too many stray pieces. Without a predictable exit path for the popped (and unpopped) kernels, the user should hide in a secure bunker while this device is on.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): $15
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Epinions.com ID:
sjdorn
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Reviews written: 5
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