I had one! Mine was green, and when I used all the teeny packets of mix, Mom would let me stir up a regular mix and I would have 4-5 wee cakes instead of the two in the teeny packet.

Man, that thing was great!

I would never ever have guessed you to be 45!

Oh, and, yeah, I never had an easy bake over. In my family, we let the kids burn themselves on real appliances. It builds character!

My brother had one from the 80’s. I think we made two cakes with it, then realized “Hey, the ones we make in the kitchen are a lot better”. Then again, I seem to recall both of us cooking well before we left elementary school.

Whoops, Gingerbread’s done…

I was Oven-deprived, though one of my cousins had one.  My parents were probably afraid I’d burn the house down with it and, after my various toaster adventures, I can’t say they were wrong. 

Don’t forget that, thanks to the intertubes, you are no longer tied into using their mixes.  Here’s a couple of quick links:

http://www.budget101.com/kids.htm

http://www.recipezaar.com/recipes.php?q[]=easy+bake+oven&ls=re

I also nearly burned the house down with a toaster, too. I’m astonished that my parents let me in the kitchen, sometimes. The Easy Bake Oven was right out. I did have a Fisher Price oven! Wouldn’t cook crap, though. The burners were stickers.

As I recall, my EBO was avocado green. But, I may just be remembering my mother’s kitchen a la 1972.

I remember my little sister had one, and I was always disappointed by the things that came out of it. Once, when she was like six, she invited a boy she had a crush on over to our house for an Easy Bake Oven session. My mom still tells the story of the doorbell ringing and her coming downstairs wearing five pounds of lipstick. In retrospect, though, the concept of her inviting a boy over for a very stereotypically female activity is pretty cute.

Easy-Bake was for wusses. Suzy Homemaker was where it was at for real baby chefs!

Sadly, my mom couldn’t afford such high-end toys, so I was forced to use a real oven.

Oh, the humanity!

I never had an EBO, I think, but I played with ones my friends had.

But I liked the Enjoli commercial. Sure, I’m younger than you, so I didn’t really know how the Superwoman myth hurts women. I just liked the idea of being able to do it all. Not that I wanted the perfume, so in that respect it failed.

But I agree with Hershele; if you can’t burn yourself, it’s not a realistic simulation.

Due to a mix-up of Chr*stmas presents at the orphanage (being a self made man, I had no parents), I inadvertently received an Easy Bake Oven™ one year (I was 19), which left me emotionally scarred until I saw the first Transporter movie.

My first Easy-Bake came when I was in Kindergarten from a yard sale. I never got to use it; my mother cut the cord and rendered it useless. Particularly galling is the fact that it would probably be a collector’s item today, if in working order. (I’ve never really forgiven her for that, though on the scale of things that bother me it’s pretty small. However, given the cookbook-hoarding freak I’ve become, I can probably assume she set me back a few years.) I will say that I don’t really understand why Hasbro continues to market the Easy-Bake as a girl’s toy though—I remember their “Queasy-Bake” thingy for boys from a couple of years ago and I have to say that I found the whole thing to be fundamentally condescending, in much the same manner as Men’s Health magazine’s disgusting A Man, A Can, A Plan series, as if boys were too potentially testosterone-poisoned to enjoy, you know, baking.

As for the Enjoli commercial… while I wouldn’t greenlight it today, hamhanded and condescending as it is, I actually think the sentiment made sense for the period—it’s a somewhat warped approach to feminism, but it does seem to make a good faith effort (at least as much as it’s possible for an ad agency to make a good faith effort at anything) to celebrate how women could do anything they wanted and still be women. The culture has changed since then, and 3+ decades on this is in fact an overly simplistic and condescending message. But it’s sort of like Abraham Lincoln’s racism—yes, he was by modern definitions a white supremacist, but he was still far ahead of the curve of his contemporaries. One can look back at something as a sort of progress, while being glad that we’ve moved past it.

I remember my easybake. I’m fairly sure it was an atrocious combination of white, pink, and green, and I burned myself at least twice because I didn’t use the spatula thingie to take the pans out. My parents obviously had it in for me because the next year they got me a toy (but functional!) jigsaw/sander/lathe set.

No, I must have had one of the first (1963) ovens, because I remember making little blue cookies with it. (I’d also recently discovered food coloring!)

I was allowed to use the microwave (shhh, Mom didn’t know, Grandma let me).  I remember wanting one (and a Lite Brite) but never getting one.  Cheap bastards. 

Oh well.  I think I never got one because my mom never wanted me to cook.  I think she was disturbed every time I did actually cook.  Which is surprising, as she is an excellent cook you would think she’d want me to have a clue. 

Or maybe I never got one because Grandma didn’t want me to cook.  I mean, she can’t (and has never been able to) cook, so maybe she just figured if I couldn’t cook I wouldn’t find it weird that she couldn’t cook. 

Eh, original theory.  Cheap bastards.

I never had one myself, but then again mom taught me how to cook from a very young age.  By 8 (the youngest recommended age for EBO), I was cooking unsupervised, so an EBO would have been a step down.

Did you see the Cinnabon packet on Amazon?  63 freaking dollars?!

Interestingly enough on the “Man, a Can and a Plan” comment, there’s still a lot of guys out there who can’t or won’t cook because they were never forced to learn.  I spent a lot of time cooking for my cousins because they couldn’t even make toast.  Don’t even get me started on Greg, who once melted a pan on the stove when he forgot he was boiling some water.  The family joke was that Greg was such a bad cook, he even burned water.

When I got married, my husband wouldn’t cook either, unless it was BBQ or bachelor mac and cheese.  I kept trying to teach him, but he always complained that it never tasted as good as when I made it (the idea that cooking is a skill you have to practice to get better at took a long time to sink in).  Then, when I spectacularly ruined a tuna noodle casserole (our family recipe was never all that good to begin with), he decided to try his mother’s recipe.  All of the sudden, he could cook!  Now, he cooks about as often as I do, he’s adapting recipes, trying new ideas like coq au vin.  He even makes his own handmade spice blends, like his special cajun jambalaya spice mix that I put on everything.

If I ever have kids and I give birth to boys, I’m making them learn how to cook.

The EasyBakeOven rocked. Mine was white and pink, I think, and we make those little 4” diameter cakes. A few years ago, we got a newer, safer one for my youngest kid. It is also fun, butI liked the original better - it’s lost in the attic somewhere in Georgia, though, and probably doesn’t work.
I’m old enough to remember the Enjoli commercial well. It was funny even in the 70’s. Probably sold a lot of perfume. I think it appealed to young women. I liked the woman on the left waving the money.

When I was a kid, I wanted an Easy Bake Oven so badly it hurt. I begged my parents for it for about three years in a row. They just didn’t get it. They would offer to teach me how to use the “real oven” which was just so not the same. Baking a ham is not the same as making teeny tiny frosted little cupcakes in my bedroom with my friends!

To this day my parents feel guilty about never buying me one. Finally in college my roommate bought me one. I played with it for about two hours and never took it out again. I imagine I would have done the same thing as a kid.

>> I came across this horror emblazoned in my memory. I remember seeing this as a youngster and thinking even at that time it was ridiculous.

Are you kidding me? This was considered the height of feminism in the ‘70s. This woman had it all: she had a job, she could function in the house, and she had sexual power. Don’t try to rewrite history and claim this was some form of oppression. This was the fulfillment of Gloria Steinem’s dreams. Amanda Marcotte herself would have claimed this commercial struck a blow for women’s rights.

My sister and I had one in the 70s (were 39 and 41).  It came from a yard or church sale.  Like Caren said above, a big part of the appeal was making something to eat without any input or oversight from the parents. 

In summer sometimes we would raid a bunch of neighbor’s gardens “foraging”.  We’d cook it and eat it at neighbor kid’s house who was a latch-key kid.

I’ve never been a big grill guy, yet when Spouse first moved in with me, she assumed I would do all the BBQing.  It took about a year, year and a half for her to realize that I’ll do it, but I’m just not that into it.  I’d still rather bake a cake.

Being able to cook is a necessary life skill.  I do not understand men who take some kind of macho pride in being dependent on another for a basic daily need.

I had the 1968 version with the little cardboard minicakes. So utterly dull.

Actually, now that I think of it, I take back what I said about the Enjoli commercial—given the incredible depth of lameness that Barbie has sunk to and the mere existence (soon to be terminated) of Bratz, that commercial is positively progressive.

I had almost forgotten about that Enjoli commercial.  My sister and I used to sing along with it.  It was always considered stupid.
 
I used to love the Chanel perfume commercial with the woman lying near a pool set to the music of The Inkspots.  There were two versions of it, one had a woman’s voiceover and the more popular had The Inkspots.  The link below is the original.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxRkocAPdJ0&feature=related

Yes, I had an EasyBake Oven and my Mom strictly monitored my use of it.  The whole process made me feel like a pyromaniac in an outpatient program.  So it went to the garage after being used a grand total of 5 times.

I had an EBO (I’m 40)...that sucker was fire-engine RED, baby!  I kind of liked making the little cakes, but the intended future-homemaker brainwashing didn’t take - the only things I cook today are microwaveable. 

i begged and begged my parents for an EBO, but they would have none of it.  not because it was gendered - they were all about traditional stereotypes - but because they thought it was stupid.

as a result of my begging, my mother taught me to bake real desserts in the grown-up oven.  which i actually really enjoyed (still do).

signed, looking forward to baking gingerbread cookies with my son this weekend.

I never had one, but the spoiled girl down the street did-she was an only child, and her parents lavished her with trinkets, instead of spending time with her.

My sisters and I were baking chocolate chip and sugar cookies in the real oven way before that, however.

Feh, who needed the scorchery of the Easy Bake Oven when you could really sear flesh with the toy we had, the Creepy Crawler oven. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creepy_Crawlers

We used the patented Plastic-Goop to make lots of bugs and we didn’t settle for the brightly colored ones; we mixed Goops until we could achieve realistic insect browns and greens. I can remember my mom stomping on one of our fake spiders, trying to kill it.

That machine got very, very hot. But it was such a great toy! They would never make those anymore. They’re like Jarts. Fun, until someone puts his eye out or gets a third degree burn.

Yup, I remember burning myself on both the EBO and the Creepy Crawlers device. I think I tired of light bulb cooking pretty quickly and I was always making stuff like cookies and cakes in the regular oven at a young age.

Once when I was around 9 or so I was making a cake and using an electric beater and, Cher-style, I had long straight hair. I was unaware that one should always tie back hair when working in the kitchen.

Yes, my hair dangled too close to the whirring beaters—-before I knew it, the machine ate up all of my hair and was enmeshed close to my scalp. I screamed for my mom, who was never known for conscientious adult supervision, and I still don’t know how she contained her laughter after entering the kitchen and taking in the sorry sight of her kid with beaters caught up in her hair and batter everywhere. She switched the machine off and ejected the beaters which hung limply from my batter-encrusted tresses. Somehow, we got the beaters out without giving me a crewcut.

never had an EBO. my mother was pretty opposed to me having toys marketed to girls. i had to whine and whine and tantrum for 3 years to get my first barbie, who was a gymnast with a leotard and legwarmers instead of a princess or whatever.

I wasn’t allowed Barbie dolls, either.  I did have these little Dawn dolls—apparently, in my mother’s mind, having 6-inch tall dolls with unrealistic proportions wouldn’t be nearly as damaging to my little psyche as having 11-inch tall ones.

My little brother asked for an easy bake oven for his 8th birthday this year.  My sister bought one for him, but she wouldn’t give it to him at his birthday party because they were worried the other kids would make fun of him.  I think it’s sweet (and a little heart-breaking) the way be just wants what he wants and the thought never occurs to him that the rest of the world might not think it is appropriate.

My Easy-Bake was also white and pink and we made many, MANY little tins of peanut-butter fudge in it.  I remember when my wee pans died, my dad substituted peanut-butter jar-lids (same size, were still metal back then) and so thereafter we had peanut-butter fudge with ridges on the sides.  I remember using mine for a long time.  My parents (I mean, erm, SANTA!) also got me a single-size home ice cream maker.  I also made all of the sweet treats in the real oven, in addition to my three sibs’ birthday cakes (my sister was terrified of the oven well into adulthood), but have grown up to not actually eat sweets much at all, let alone bake them.

I do love the US Queer As Folk episode when Michael got his Easy Bake Oven finally, though I kind of can’t believe Debbie wouldn’t have gotten him one in the first place.

While I never had an EBO, I did have that orange-and-green Creepy Crawlers oven, and I assume they’re fundamentally the same.

I wanted an easy-bake when I was a kid, but I think my parents were worried enough about my masculinity without that.  That might have been about the year we got a deep fryer and a french-fry cutter. And I never really have learned to bake cakes. Bread, sure, but cakes and cookies, nuh-uh.

(And a funny thing about that masculinity role model thing: my mother taught me how to use a drill, a soldering iron and a saber saw. In college I returned the favor by buying her her first circular saw. My father taught me… well, some jokes and how to do spreadsheets in the days before computers and, uh.)

That machine got very, very hot. But it was such a great toy! They would never make those anymore. They’re like Jarts. Fun, until someone puts his eye out or gets a third degree burn.

Donna, you’re not even mentioning the sheer amount of toxic gases PlastiGoop must have been exuding during the baking/frying process. You were heating plastic to ridiculous temperatures, usually in an enclosed basement, for hours on end while you and your friends destroyed braincell after braincell. And so did I! Woot!