Sunbeam Mixmaster - The Last of The Classics

Model 12* was the longest-selling, longest-manufactured single model among the classic Sunbeam Mixmasters, from her October 1957 premiere to her retirement from production and sales in 1967. Most likely, she equaled or exceeded the sales record of Model 7 (estimated: four million units), giving long and distinguished service to millions, as her predecessors did (and do). However, even as this classic styler began making a new generation of Mixmaster lovers, a change had seeped into Sunbeam's corporate culture and thinking, even as Model 12 first arrived in the stores, not necessarily for the better.

A year or so earlier, like a good too many American corporations, Sunbeam succumbed to the seductions of corporate hierarchy, including what came to be called marketing research. To Ivar Jepson and his R and D virtuosi, marketing research, if anything, meant hints toward what they needed to improve what they already had, not flooding a market with too much duplication. They apparently chafed under new regime pressures to expand their team, product lines, and categories, several of which Sunbeam simply was not acclimated to handle properly enough. Not to mention acquisition, as in the company's purchase of the John Oster Manufacturing Company (you guessed it: the makers of the Osterizer "beehive" blender, and that line of Oster hair and personal care products you saw in your childhood barber shop or beauty parlour) in 1960.

Not very long into Model 12's production run, Sunbeam began featuring more than one model or style in several appliance categories, aside from the aforementioned Shavemaster electric razor. Regarding kitchen mixers, it began with a stand version of the boxy-looking hand mixer which replaced Mixmaster Junior in the late 1950s, and continued along similar lines for many years. Model 12, in fact, was actually designated the Sunbeam Deluxe Mixmaster. The company introduced a budget line of appliances, known as the Vista line, in the early 1960s, including a version of the Mixmaster. In due course, this multiplication would affect just about all Sunbeam appliances - according to at least one striking analysis of the company's post-Jepson history, Sunbeam, at one point just prior to 1995, had as many as more than two hundred versions of an electric iron.

Seen at right is a Sunbeam Vista Mixmaster†, made in the early-to-mid 1960s; seen at left, the cover of the 1962 edition of its instruction and recipe booklet. It sports a twelve-speed Mix-Finder Dial trimmed similarly to the Model 5-9 dial; its motor shell trim alludes somewhat to Models 10-12. In a nod to the future, it features a front-mounted bowl shift lever that moves the turntable back and forth for proper beater alignment, and a black push-button beater ejector at the top front of the handle. This mixer also offered up a power transfer unit and meat grinder attachment, with the unit mount configured somewhat differently than the standard unit, to fit the distinctive bowl-shift apparatus beneath the platform surface. Overall, this Vista Mixmaster, while certainly attractive (as was a hand mixer designed similarly), points the stylistic way to the standard Mixmaster which would debut in 1967 and end the life of the classic machine.

This multiplication approach could not have pleased Jepson, who probably saw it (correctly, as things turned out) as doomed to failure compared to his time-tested formula. Had he sought support evidence, he would have had no farther to look than Sunbeam's own great Chicago appliance-making rival: the A.F. Dormeyer Corporation, evolved under its elder namesake's stewardship from the former MacLeod Manufacturing Corporation..

Noble crosstown competitor: the original Dormeyer Power Chef

Dormeyer was almost as familiar an American kitchen presence as Sunbeam. As footnoted earlier on this site, their earliest products included a hand-held electric beater with a Hamilton Beach-made motor. In the 1920s, they crafted a memorable, box-like hand-held mixer with a beater assembly designed to allow the mixer to stand freely in a bowl; and, among a run of vertical-motor stand mixers, they produced the striking Mix Rite, with a beer stein-like stand neck and an overall shapely design. In later years, Dormeyer almost equaled the Mixmaster's popularity and identifiability with its own electric mixers. The Dormeyer Power Chef of 1950-55-- and, its chrome variants, the Silver Chef and the Silver Star--were almost as familiar in American home kitchens as the Mixmaster.

Dormeyer had made more than one model stand mixer (and other appliances) at a time since at least the late 1930s. The Power Chef was the top of a line which included the variable priced Meal Maker (this mixer should be familiar to 1970s television fans: it sat on Edith Bunker's All in the Family kitchen counter, next to the refrigerator), the Budgeteer, and the later Mix Maid (which was, for all intent and purpose, a stand mixer version of its Dormey hand mixer--which itself premiered as the hand version of the Budgeteer). The Meal Maker's successor, which began as the Mix-Mor and developed into the slightly more attractive Mixwell around 1957, also succeeded the Power Chef line as the company's topline food mixer, yet it, too, knew a few staggered variants. (Dormeyer also seems to have allowed other companies or stores--Universal, Montgomery Ward, and others--to make or market variations on those appliances under their own marques, something Sunbeam under Jepson's R and D stewardship would have deemed unconscionable.)

Dormeyer appliances were as durable as their Sunbeam rivals, no questions asked. (The Fri-Well deep fryer was almost as popular a Dormeyer appliance as its electric mixers.) Dormeyer mixers did not, alas (and bear in mind, this is strictly your chronicler's personal bias), equal the Mixmaster for a proper combine of durability, versatility, and style. The aforesaid Mix-Rite was one exception; the stunning 1948 Power Chef#, shown above left, was another; the late-1950s Dormey hand mixer (it resembled a vehicle that began as a hot-rod sports car and finished as a speed boat) was a third. These and its classic box-shaped blender of the early-to-mid 1950s aside, some saw the typical Dormeyer appliance as a stodgy-looking product that usually appeared dated before its first year's life was done. Perhaps an inability to reconcile affordability (the topline Dormeyer mixer was priced typically higher than the Mixmaster and other such competitors) to top quality construction, with less room for style appeal, combined to price Dormeyer right out of its markets. By 1967-68, approximately, the company went right out of business. Based on products your chronicler remembers seeing in the 1960s, Dormeyer probably tried to modernise product designs (the most impressive: the 1962 Silver Crest mixer, which seemed graduated from a bid to restyle and revive the venerable enough Power Chef to a bid to restyle the Mixwell). Was it too little, too late? For a company that built its own loyal usership (and not just with housewares; those who bought Dormeyer power drills have sworn there was no tougher or better such performer), this seems shameful at minimum. That loyalty remains as Dormeyer buffs swap the company's own vintage products. Perhaps Dormeyer's demise could have been avoided.

Post-1957, Sunbeam wasn't entirely a spread-too-thin complete stiff. Their newer designers kept a small sense of the absurd, most notably with a pair of vacuum cleaners: the Dual Deluxe (which resembled a hatbox-style vanity case) and its successor, the Courier (which looked like someone built a vacuum cleaner into a Samsonite hardshell suitcase). These might have been the whackiest vacuum cleaner designs of all time, had it not been for three which preceded them: the famed Hoover Constellation canister (born in 1952, made through the early 1970s, it resembled the planet Saturn); the 1955-60 Lewyt canister (it looked like a flip-top kitchen trash can...which is precisely how you loaded and unloaded its filter bag); and, the mid-1950s General Electric R-1 canister (nicknamed the Roll Easy, it looked like a coffee can kicked over and rolling the floor on its side).

On the other hand, what on earth was Sunbeam doing making vacuum cleaners in the first place? This seemed almost as preposterous as Hoover making a kitchen mixer. Or was it? Hoover did try its hand at a number of other small kitchen appliances (beginning, seemingly, in the late 1940s), and the most memorable thing about them was a clever tagline the company dreamed up for advertising these products in the early-to-mid 1960s: "We're the same company that makes the vacuum cleaners." Theoretically, Sunbeam could have tried the same thing with the Dual Deluxe and the Courier, but you don't need me to tell you how ridiculous would have been, "We're the same company that makes the Mixmaster." As it was, the Dual Deluxe lived only seven years, in two configurations; the Courier barely lived four years. But in one way, it hardly mattered. By the time of Mixmaster Model 12's 1967 retirement, Sunbeam was well enough on the way down a slippery slope, far away from the distinctiveness which had made the company name in the first place.

Apparently disillusioned, Ivar Jepson retired from Sunbeam in 1963. Two years later, taking a drive with his wife, he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 62 years old. He had turned an obscure Chicago sheep-shearing and horse-trimming equipment maker which dabbled in home appliances into the very essence of American home appliance design and manufacturing. But very few outside his family and former associates knew who he was, or what he actually meant - until, hopefully, the premiere of this Website in early 1999.

Bizarre though it might sound, the company whose name Jepson made was said to have disappeared nearly every trace of him. Records, official and unofficial documents, working scale models. According to one of the only published articles about him in the years since his death,** they were "simply loaded into dumpsters and trashed, and company representatives today seem to have little awareness of his achievements or significance" - a contention supported by various Sunbeam buffs of your chronicler's acquaintance, describing their own direct dealings with the company regarding the classic Mixmaster or any other vintage Sunbeam appliance.

Indeed, when your chronicler inquired of the company itself (circa 1996-97) as to how and where he might acquire a meat grinder attachment for a Model 11 he acquired at a yard sale (this Model 11 quickly became ruined in heavy flood damage in northern California, alas), the individual who answered his call seemed very badly offput and annoyed that he had even made such an inquiry. I should have known: the aforesaid profile of Mr. Jepson mentions that the Sunbeam Corporation at that writing seemed to have little regard for its own history. By contrast, Hamilton Beach was quite proud of its history, rightly so, even posting it up on its Website.

The only known records of Ivar Jepson's work to have survived, aside from comments cited earlier on site, are a binding his colleagues made upon his retirement, of patent documents taken in his name - four volumes containing "an astonishing range of devices and design concepts." Most likely, they remain in his family's possession. Although one of Jepson's children was said to have been quite cooperative in the research and composition of the aforementioned article, the family seems to have made little public presence in the years since his death. My best-educated speculation is that the Jepson family was so disheartened by the treatment their father's legacy received, and understandably so, that they may well be very gun shy about sharing it with the world today. It is a terrible, and unnecessary, waste of legacy, for a man whose impact upon American home life was, and remains, immeasurable.‡

...and disaster.

Here's the story...of a lovely lady...not!

In late 1967 and early 1968, Sunbeam rolled out a new Mixmaster style. (You fans of The Brady Bunch should recognise it in a heartbeat.) It was a very contemporary but plain-looking machine, compared to its boulevardier and beboppin'-at-the-hop forbears. More plastic than metal, and apparently designed as an enhancement of the Vista Mixmaster you saw above; taking on both far more Eurostyling flourishes and far less contoured lines over time.‡‡ This Mixmaster--after one or two modifications and experiments (like a food processor-like slicer/shredder attachment, for a short while)--also offered nothing even close to the classic attachments, though it did introduce dough hooks. Even the juicer disappeared in due course, the mount replaced by a similarly-positioned beater ejector button...the first Mixmaster since Model 5 which did not eject the beaters by pulling the handle down to the right.

Sunbeam even tried one bold move to compete with the increasing popularity of the heavy-looking, bakery-style mixers made by Kitchen Aid, the home appliance subsidiary of the restaurant/bakery equipment making Hobart Corporation. The Sunbeam answer was a huge, sixteen-speed beast known as either Mixmaster Plus or Power Plus. It survived only four or five years from the late 1970s through the early 1980s. The basic 1967-68 Mixmaster styling survived, with very, very few modifications, until the mid-to-late 1990s.

As the 1990s began and progressed, classic Mixmaster buffs could have been forgiven if they thought Sunbeam couldn't decide whether to honour what made the company name or mock it: The 1990 Mixmaster featured a stand platform which tipped its turntable to the Model 1 Automatic' s stretch-paddle shape. But it also was subject of the only known recall of Sunbeam Mixmasters, due to a detected danger of electric shock--something unthinkable in the Jepson era. The packaging for this Mixmaster also featured an illustration of a 1930s mother and daughter whipping up a treat in a Model M4J, a kind of cruel tease toward the product's lineage, considering how far beyond both uniqueness and quality the 1990 model had been.

The 1980s and 1990s brought Sunbeam to the brink of destruction, back to the brink of a fair semblance of its former heyday, and damn near back to the brink of destruction yet again. Allegheny International bought the company in 1981. By 1988 Allegheny's other divisional sales had flattened enough to force it into bankruptcy, and Sunbeam was bought by three investors, Michael Price, Michael Steinhardt, and Paul Kazarian, who changed the name to the Sunbeam-Oster Company. They brought the company public for the first time in 1992, forced Kazarian out in 1993, and moved the company to Florida. They also brought in what they thought would be a grand bolt of shock treatment to yank the company back to primacy, if not absolute greatness: they brought in a chief executive officer named Al Dunlap. Never mind "Built with integrity; backed by service." Dunlap's tenure began with controversy (his worldwide company head-choppings--earning the nickname "Chainsaw Al"--were joined by a move Sunbeam should have made years earlier: dumping more than half the variants of particular products); then, with apparent resurrection and even expansion (buying the Coleman camping equipment makers, for example) and ended in disaster.

Dunlap, it turned out, had used the classic "bill and hold" technique of selling large volume to retailers, holding the product in separate warehouses for later delivery, and thus inflating the profit picture. The technique is not illegal or even any degree unethical, but it ultimately provoked Sunbeam leadership into questioning whether Dunlap (and/or his designated accountants) was playing with the proverbial full deck, especially when the would-be New Mr. Sunbeam dropped a little bomb on them to the effect of, "Don't expect quite the profits I thought we should expect." The Securities and Exchange Commission had the same questions in due course. In rapid succession, Sunbeam--whose stock Dunlap brought back to a $55 per share plateau at one point (and, at one point, may have hoped to make $70 per share, as a price to sell the company)--saw its stock collapse. Chainsaw Al's chainsaw was turned toward his own neck. Following a February 2001 bankruptcy filing, since which time Dunlap reportedly agreed to pay $15 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit***, the company has continued its slow climb back toward recovering its former market power.

One almost-victim of the bill-and-hold: the full-size, full-power Sunbeam Mixmaster†††, seen at right, of 1997-98. This Mixmaster had to wait until its immediate predecessor could be unloaded; that predecessor's surplus stock fell like a stone from a skyscraper in retail price in those two years, as the new baby began appearing on the shelves. I remember quite distinctly that a number of stores offered both Mixmasters for sale--around the time Chainsaw Al's own head got chopped--as Sunbeam was forced to release some of that bill-and-hold inventory to the stores which had already paid for the new models.

This Mixmaster was probably the most attractive-looking full-size kitchen mixer on the market when at last it premiered, make no mistake. It was without question the most attractive Mixmaster since Model 12's 1967 retirement, and would do no dishonour to any kitchen. Its styling shows traces of everything which came before it, while straining in its way to duck the legacy of the classic Mixmaster, save the Mix-Finder Dial in its customary location, and the shapely stand neck, which looks rather like a straightened-up, wide-bodied version of the Model 12 neck. The turntable seems to split the difference between Models 5-9 and Model 10 - mounted atop the platform rather than recessed in, but holding bowls by their rings. Strain hard enough, and you see the motor mount bearing a vague resemblance to that which graced Models M4C through Model 1 Automatic.

<>But the emphasis is on "strain." Attractive in its own right though this Mixmaster very much was (you should have seen its spanking chrome variant), if you were to sit it next to a classic Mixmaster, you would think anything except that this is the descendant of America's mechanical house pet. Needless to say, the charming accessory versatility and personality which made the Mixmaster what it once was is all but extinct. Sunbeam's flagship home appliance--which made the company name once and for all, and was allowed to suffer, as the company was all but overtaken by that culture which tries to fix what isn't broken in the first place--has too long been just another kitchen mixer. Something unique had gone from America.
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† - Sunbeam Vista Mixmaster photograph courtesy of Cathy and Lee MacGregor. Your chronicler recalls one such Mixmaster in his family, a white model owned by a great aunt, of blessed memory, and, in fairness, she derived many years of strong service from this machine. Not to mention, as I recall, a positively wicked sponge cake!

# - 1948 Dormeyer Power Chef; restoration and photograph by Kevin (vtakro) DesRochers

‡ - In the unlikely event that a member of the Jepson family should happen to stumble upon this site, your chronicler prays they accept it as a tribute, however belated and with all shortcomings, to Ivar Jepson, his work, and his legacy.

‡‡ - During the mid-1980s, in fact, Sunbeam brought out an explictly-labeled Euro-style Mixmaster - it was a flat-plank arm, bent at an angle to hold two beaters, with the motor in the neck of the stand, driving the beaters through (flexible?) shafting running up the arm, and a twelve-speed dial on the left neck-side - an incidental reference to the switch configuration on the original Mixmaster!. This Euro configuration may in fact have derived from a very ancient design: a smaller, three-speed machine made in the late 1920s-early thirties, under the combined Hotpoint/General Electric marque, with a similarly-configured motor and beater arm and a single-piece beater assembly that seemed derived from the familiar-enough Hamilton Beach style of yore. The mixer we know as the Euro-styled Mixmaster is actually still being produced, by Sunbeam Australia.