985,000 Easy Bake Ovens Recalled
When I was a little one, I oh so wanted an Easy Bake oven. Never did get one - my mother kept saying something about having access to a perfectly good full sized kitchen whenever I wanted.
But I was just entranced - tiny exquisite cakes! Perfectly decorated little sugar cookies! Sprinkles! Frostings! For whatever reason, I felt the Easy Bake would turn me into the next Julia Child. (As any well marketed kitchen gadget should do.)
It wasn’t just that I coveted the Easy Bake due to it’s well cemented place in pop culture. In one of Louisa May Alcott’s books (either Good Wives or Little Men, I can’t remember now) there is a whole scene in which a little girl has a real miniature stove/oven setup. As in little cast-iron, coal fired, the real deal and she then goes about setting up a dinner party. I thought that was just the absolute coolest thing and thought it was a definite shame that I couldn’t get hold of that.
Overall, I think the biggest draw was the fact that the Easy Bake oven was MY size. Sure, I had a whole kitchen I could use just for the asking, but it was sized for a bunch of grownups and I definitely was not. I couldn’t reach a damn thing, I managed to whack my head on the oven door handle more times than I could count and generally, when your tools just don’t fit you, it’s not quite as much fun.
Should I ever find myself with little ones that have an interest in mucking around in the kitchen, I need to remember this and figure out some ways to make it work without having to resort to a crappy Easy Bake oven…
