Magic Ovens

"Gooschy Bread" was the name my younger sibling gave to Wonder Bread* back when we were growing to 90% of our adult height and eating lots of peanut butter sandwiches. We were building strong bodies 12 ways with a product that was almost as good as Play-doh for molding and didn't dry out as quickly.

When I saw the photos of items created by a 3-D printer known as Desktop Factory in the May fifth New York Times story, "Beam It Down From the Web, Scotty", I remembered shaping the Wonder Bread. Why didn't we ever think to bake the gooschy bread in the Creepy Crawler Thingmaker molds by Mattel? It would have been cheaper than Plastigoop, and just as edible!



What is 3-D printing? You put a picture of a pizza into the machine, and a real pizza comes out hot and ready to eat...Close, but not exactly. According to the Desktop Factory website, a 3-D printer "turns digital data from computer-aided design (CAD) programs, 3D graphics and animation software, and scanners into sturdy physical models." This process is "commonly referred to as 'rapid prototyping'." And here I thought that was something police weren't supposed to do.

It's still easier and cheaper to obtain a vintage Easy Bake Oven or a Mattel Vac-U-Form, but prices for 3-D printers will be dropping below $5000 soon:

Bill Gross, chairman of IdeaLab, says the technology it has developed, which uses a halogen light bulb to melt nylon powder, will allow the price of the printers to fall to $1,000 in four years. “We are Easy-Bake Ovening a 3-D model,” he said. “The really powerful thing about this idea is that the fundamental engineering allows us to make it for $300 in materials.”

In 1963: America's first working toy oven, was turquoise and had a carrying handle and fake stove top. It was invented by designers at Kenner Products (now a division of Hasbro). In its first year, over 500,000 lucky kids talked their parents into spending $15.95. By its fifth birthday, the EASY-BAKE Oven was a household name.



The toy oven used an ordinary light bulb as a heat source. I didn't have one, of course, but the first kid on our block did, and we were invited over to make brownies that tasted like cardboard. She had the Chatty Cathy doll and the Schwinn Stingray bicycle with banana seat, too. Still, it was an era of amazing possibilities and turquoise Ford Mustangs...



Our first molding model experience was creating a hollow rubber model of a Mercury space capsule using a science kit my dad got at the toy store and saved for a snow day. I still have the mold, and use it as twin paperweights. (Many things in my house fall into the euphemistic "paperweight" category.)



We had a Mattel Vac-U-Form/ThingMaker, a toy for molding little plastic race cars and burning ourselves on the 110-volt hotplate. We also made lots of Creepy Crawlers, Creeple People, and Fun Flowers. I don't know why we never baked fishhooks into the Creepy Crawlers to make our own artificial bait. At the neighbors' we could make Incredible Edibles out of Gobble-Di-Goop, and those were as tasty as the Easy Bake brownies.



Vac-U-Form enabled you to melt a sheet of styrene plastic and quickly make a mold of any item. This toy is not only desired by collectors, but by model makers to make molds of small parts. The original styrene sheets, called "Material Paks" are difficult to find these days. "You can tell it's Mattel, it's swell."

*The term "Wonder Years" was coined by the Continental Baking Corp. (Wonder is now made by Interstate Bakeries Corp.) in conjunction with its "help build strong bodies 12 ways" advertising campaign. Wonder Bread defines the "wonder years" as ages one through 12, when children grow to 90% of their adult height.

By 1967 I was in junior high. The magic of ovens was being replaced by 4-H and Home Ec class. I trudged home each afternoon to eat French Vanilla Creme cookies (made by Keebler, I think), and watch Perry Mason, Star Trek, and Gilligan's Island reruns before doing homework for an hour or two.

The original Keebler "jingle" reads like this: "Man, you never would believe where the Keebler® Cookies come from. They're baked by little elves in a hollow tree. And what do you think makes these cookies so uncommon? They're baked in magic ovens, and there's no factory. Hey!" (Lyrics by Tom Shutter, copywriter, Leo Burnett, 1967)

I'm sure owning a home version of a rapid prototyping 3-D printer is just around the corner. I know it will be just as useful as the office laminator at the hardware store where the teen evening staff encases pizza slices and cockroaches...Incredible Edibles and Creepy Crawlers!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder