andre98's Full Review: Helman Group OFP501 Old-Fashioned Movie Time Popco...
I received this unit as a gift. Thank goodness, because I would be real mad if I wasted my own money. I am a long time popcorn popping fan, and I've used other hot air popcorn devices for many years. There's not much high tech thinking that goes into these devices. The function of hot air corn popping is simple. Instead of heating up kernels with oil in a pan, the kernels are put in a chamber where concentrated hot air heats up and pops the kernels. This simple process has been around for years. How can a business fail to successfully do what has been so well established? My guess is by spending more money on exterior design than the quality of the actual product.
Features? You plug it in, and load in the popcorn and switch it on. It's just that simple. As with all hot air poppers, you must be careful not to load in too many kernels, or many will remain unpopped. This particular model is made to resemble an old fashioned street popcorn cart, and on that strength alone, it was the craze around the nation to buy and give as gifts. I saw it in the stores, saw that it was a hot air popper, which I already own, so it didn't impress me to see one that looked "cute".
It was a little puzzling to me when my in-laws gave it to us for Christmas 2002. Their kids were more excited than I was, and wanted to come use it one day soon. So I left it in it's original packaging for that occasion, since it would be more a thrill for the kids. As I mentioned, I had a hot air popper, already in regular use for a good ten years. My in-laws knew this from all the previous movie nights at our house. I can't fault them for being swayed by the design look of it, coupled with the pressure of the gift giving season. That movie night opportunity never really came. We went to their house, or they brought other snacks over, there was always something that kept us from giving the unit it's maiden run. An entire year passed, until just tonight 01/12/04 when I happened across some epinion reviews, and decided to unpack it and test it out for my own review. So after all this set up, let me get to the actual product.
Looks apparently are everything. This would look good in our rec room, on the bar with other knick knacks. But sadly it won't be finding a home there. After reading the instructions, just to make sure there wasn't some fancy trick that set it apart, I went to use it for the very first time. Carefully making sure I had a level measure of corn as directed, I switched it on, placed a nice high bowl at the mouth of it to catch the corn, and prepared to watch the magic.
Now, you must understand that with most of the hot air poppers, the expulsion of air upward and outward, carrying the kernels that have popped out into the bowl, is going to catch and bring along for the ride a fair number of unpopped kernels. These kernels may be on the verge of popping, and may do so after they have fallen in the bowl. That's just a normal aspect of the process. But it should not happen in any great volume. As opposed to other units I've used, this Nostalgia unit brought a flood of unpopped kernels up and out into the bowl with the popped corn. This meant that many more were then popping after being in the bowl, but nearly as many as those that never had the chance to get enough heat before being expelled from the hot air chamber. I have a theory on that.
The Nostalgia unit's structure, in the attempt to imitate the open space of an old popcorn cart right outside the hot air chamber, leaves too much room for the product to fly straight up and then out freely. If you look at the room provided in most hot air devices directly over the heating chamber, you'll see that it's narrower and only allows the corn to be directed out at a tight 90 degree angle. I believe this allows the opportunity for many of the unpopped kernels that are "taking a ride" on the fluffy popped ones to get jostled loose and to fall back into the heating chamber until they actually get popped. On the Nostalgia unit, there is a higher clearance immediately outside the top of the heating chamber, allowing the flow of the corn to escape in all directions. This was probably intentional so the corn can be seen in the square boxed "viewing chamber", for lack of a better word. This would complete the visual the makers were looking for in designing the unit. You know how the movie theaters show the mounds of popcorn in the machine to catch your eye and get your mouth watering.
However, in a hot air unit, the corn is going to be exiting the machine immediately, there is no "sitting" display of corn to be viewed from all sides, despite the box cover's illustration. All this freedom of space does is help it exit a little too fast. There is a slanted metal surface all the way around the heating chamber's chute that then directs the flow of the corn down and out in the bowl's direction. The unpopped kernels have no reliable way of kicking back into the chamber for a second and third shot at the heat. There is a metal piece that extends down from the top, probably meant to help achieve containment of some sort, but the flow too easily bubbles over and out of the heating element's chamber in a 360 degree fountain pattern, and so many of the unpopped kernels get swept right along with it.
It was a very lousy first performance. I could hear the hard unpopped kernels pouring into the bowl. I used corn from a newly opened plastic jar of premium popping corn, so staleness of the product was not an issue. The bottom of the bowl was covered in "seeds", as we used to call them as kids. The childhood pastime of gnawing on those rejects to draw out the popcorn experience after the popped corn is consumed has long faded, especially if they were supposed to be the toasty "almost popped" kernels, not the raw untouched escapees.
But wait! There's more!
Just as the poor popping performance ended, the motor sound of the unit started to wind down. I thought maybe there was an auto scale back of the operation when it's sensed that the corn kernels were out of the chamber? No such luck. The smell of something electrically hot was in the air. I switched it off and unplugged it. Now, with my old faithful Wearever hot air popper, if you can stand the noise all these types of units make, you could leave it on, because all the kernels do blow out of the chamber after all those that can pop do so. If I was making an especially large batch, I could go ahead and pour in more. With the chamber already good and hot, the new batch would pop up even more productively. Well, I wasn't planning to do that with this Nostalgia unit anyway, and good thing, because apparently the demand for this unit in the marketplace must have compromised quality for production volume, and my unit slipped through on the assembly line with defective circuitry. Something was grinding to a halt. The instructions made no mention of a thermal fuse that would intervene and reset after the unit cooled. I had to see if this was a fluke, so I took a chance and plugged it back in and turned it on an hour later. That very low level winding down moan was still there, when down lower, and after 5 seconds, the motor cut out completely and is unresponsive entirely now. That electrical smell resurfaced. As skittish as I am about all things electrical, I am surprised and a bit unpleased with myself that I even tried it a second time. My counter has no room for this popper to be occupying space just for it's looks, so in the trash bin it goes. I'll have to tell my niece and nephew it went to a happier place.
I then pulled out my old reliable Wearever Popcorn Pumper hot air unit, and had a heaping bowl of popped corn in a jiffy. It cost me 10 bucks 10 years ago and is still going strong. Too bad I waited a year to unpack and try the Nostalgia unit. It's not returnable. I've spotted it for as much as $40, but I believe it was on sale in the high twenties a year ago at Christmas and they couldn't keep it on the shelves. I wonder how many of these are piled next to that singing bass novelty and the salad shooters in basements across America.
Save your money and get a basic hot air model.
Sorry I didn't post in time to save holiday buyers from getting taken.
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