Skip the Chocolate Maker and buy a Chocolate bar instead
Written: Feb 26 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: uses chocolate chips
Cons: takes forever, difficult to clean, batteries & chocolate not included
The Bottom Line: Don't waste your time with this. Use a bowl, spoon & microwave instead!
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| brooklynsmum's Full Review: Spin Master Hershey's Chocolate Magic Maker |
It really seemed like a good idea at the time. It was only $6.99. It was something we could do together. We had a huge success with the Spin Master Slushie Maker. What could possibly go wrong?
What’s in the Box?
The Hershey’sChocolate Magic Molding Kit comes with:
1 – Purple & blue molded plastic Chocolate Maker. All the dials are stickers and the only functioning switch is the on/off switch with a tiny light indicator to show whether the unit is on or off. Our indicator quit working half way through our first use, so we now rely on memory (or trial and error) to tell us which is on and off.
4 – Silicone Chocolate Molds – Each mold contains four individual molds for a total of 16. These make very small chocolates, but there is definitely a variety of shapes and styles from baseball bats to teddy bears to coins.
4 – plastic Sticks for chocolate pops – Each mold has an indentation to hold the stick. The sticks are really the equivalent of plastic toothpicks and will get lost quickly, but they do stay in place. The problem is that there are 16 molds and only 4 sticks and the chocolate oozes out of the mold through the indentation when you don’t use them.
But no Chocolate???
No, no chocolate. No batteries either. To their credit, Spin Master designed this toy to use easily accessible ingredients, unlike the disappointing McFlurry Maker my girls got for Christmas. Just add regular chocolate chips to make your chocolate. Of course, this means that your finished creation will tasted exactly like chocolate chips – not great for the chocolate connoisseur, but fine for anyone under the age of ten.
We managed to put off using this machine for quite awhile under the excuse, “we have to buy batteries first”. This unit takes four D batteries, which obviously are not included. The fact that it takes us a couple hours to produce enough chocolates to share combined with the fact that the indicator light doesn’t work causing us to leave the machine “on” for a couple extra hours means that the batteries didn’t last very long in our house. We are now using the excuse, “Sorry, but the batteries are dead” - not that they show much interest anyway.
Is it at least easy to use?
Sure, if you are over thirty and have a university degree. In other words, don’t ask my kids – Mom’s the one who did all the work while they watched and giggled about the chocolate looking like “poop” when it came out. In theory, you just add chocolate chips, wait for them to melt, push the plunger to dispense the chocolate and set the tray in the fridge to harden. Pop out the chocolate (thanks to the silicone trays, this is the easiest part) and enjoy. Of course reality works a little differently.
Nothing comes easily with this machine. The unit takes 8 minutes to preheat – an eternity for a six year old waiting for chocolate. Once the plunger is filled (approximately 35 chocolate chips), there is another wait for the chocolate to melt. This is supposed to take three minutes, but of course in our house it took more like five minutes. Once the waiting part is done, it’s time to push on the plunger. The chocolate, according to the instructions, “will flow from the Melting Tip”. In actuality, it will come out in a giant blob, filling exactly one of the four molds on the tray and then you will wait another 1-5 minutes for the rest of the chocolate in the chamber to melt enough to come out in another giant blob, filling the next mold. Because it is a toy, the chocolate does not get very hot – a good safety feature, but on that makes the whole process very slow. The 35 chocolate chips in the chamber are used up very quickly. I don’t think we’ve ever been able to fill a whole tray of four chocolates without refilling the chamber. If you get impatient and add more chips, you will end up waiting even longer for the pieces to melt. All of this to do what I could do with a bowl, a spoon, a microwave and a mold in a fraction of the time, and then there’s the cleaning.
Cleaning the machine is not an overly easy task either. I am used to the multiple pieces included in most of these toys – the slushie maker, the McFlurry makers, etc. I don’t mind cleaning those pieces, because it’s really easily done. This may contain only a few pieces, but cleaning them is much more of a bother. For starters, you must unscrew the melting chamber from the unit before you can clean it. Thanks to the nature of hardened chocolate and the shape of the tube, it is difficult to get clean. I finally opened up a new toothbrush to clean the inside of it. The best method of cleaning is very hot soapy water.
Should I take the chance and buy it?
I really don’t recommend this unit, and I usually love these types of toys. My kids are under the 8+ age recommendation, so I may feel differently in two years, but the amount of time involved is excessive even for that age group. Maybe I would feel differently if I didn’t know how easy it is to do this without a dispenser and that my kids would enjoy the process a lot more. You really don’t need a fancy toy to make chocolates with your kids.
If you still decide that you want to buy this toy, here are some tips that I learned the hard way:
• When they say 8+, they mean 8+. Allow a three year old a chance to push on the plunger, even under very close supervision, and you will end up with a gloppy mess in an instant.
• Tap the filled molds on the counter to spread the chocolate into all the crevices
• Use mini chocolate chips to cut down on the melting time
• White chocolate chips take longer to melt – if they melt at all.
• Do not bother screwing the melting chamber into the base very tightly since you will be unscrewing it to clean it anyway. More important, do not let your husband who insists that everything from pop bottles to jar lids be tightly fastened screw the melting chamber onto the unit or you will be unscrewing for quite awhile.
• In the end, be prepared for the finished chocolates, along with a few good handfuls of chocolate chips to disappear before you even get a chance to admire them. Oh, and the kids will enjoy the chips as much as they do the chocolate coins!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 6.99 CAD
Type of Toy: Other
Age Range of Child: 6 to 8 Years
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Epinions.com ID:
brooklynsmum
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Location: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Reviews written: 75
Trusted by: 58 members
About Me:
It's birthday time at our house. Reviews to follow!
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