The further the Jepson era receded to the distant past, the more beloved the era's appliances--especially the Mixmaster--would prove, as time moved on toward the crossing into a new millenium. The old Mixmasters+ and no few of their old attachments--not to mention several other Sunbeam appliances of the time (notably, variations of the Coffeemaster and the T-9 and T-20 toasters, a fair share of earlier Ironmasters, and certain of the Shavemaster electric razors)--sell, trade, re-sell, and re-trade continuously. Some of the prices they fetch can be staggering. As in, in the climbing hundreds, especially for the more rare Mixmaster attachments. Cases in point: Within the first seven months of 2001, a Model M4A (the very first Mixmaster) auctioned on eBay at a price approaching $400. A couple of months later, a can opener attachment auctioned for a cool $230. In early November 2002, a Model 3 with ivory power transfer unit, grinder, pea sheller, and other goodies, fetched an even more cool $325 on eBay. All the classic Jepson era products, depending upon their condition (or restoration to factory-fresh condition), are decent traders. That says something about their endurance, in real mechanical and aesthetic value, the affection they hold after all these years, and the soundness behind Ivar Jepson's working philosophies.
 

The United States thrives upon periodic stabs at resurrecting her past, whether or not the aforesaid kultursmog cares to admit it. Edward R. Murrow once posited that, as a nation, we had come into our full inheritance at a tender age. But, like any mortal creature which comes so young, we have squandered only too many of the more valuable currencies therein. There is no desire here to make any case against progress, nor (despite the obvious stirring) is there a desire to consecrate nostalgia as lifestyle. But there is a legitimate question as to whether we learn only in the breach how truly precious was what we left behind too soon, once it could be held in our hands no longer. (Given the long-entrenched supremacy of the State and subordination of the individual in these United States, one could also say freedom itself comes very much to mind.) In many ways, everyday life is far less arduous than that known by our parents and grandparents, whose Mixmasters graced our childhood kitchens. In many other ways, everyday life has been permitted to turn into so perpetual a perpetual motion machine that we have only too little time to indulge or appreciate the real depth of our homes, and what we make of them, wherever we make them. Perhaps that is a critical core to the secret of just why the streamlined appeal, durability, and almost-anything-goes versatility of the classic Sunbeam Mixmaster is so acutely amplified today.
  

Not long after the century turned at last, it looked like Sunbeam began gazing back upon its own proud history. For about a year, the company's own Website featured a "Sunbeam Mixers History" page, offering a thumbnail sketch of the Mixmaster's birth and progress, plus a few choice images from Mixmaster past: flanking a pair of today's Mixmasters (the handsome enough 1998-99 model, and a companion hand mixer), there were three black-and-white classic ads (for Models 7, 3, and 11, from left to right); a succulent-looking colour ad for Model 7; a classic Christmas ad for Model 11; and, the now-famous postage stamp choosing the Mixmaster to represent the 1930s explosion in household conveniences. The site also featured a timeline sketch of the company's history, from its Chicago Flexible Shaft founding through the present, noting the key developments of all signature Sunbeam products.

Sometime in 2001, I pondered aloud---in the event anyone from Sunbeam happened by this site, and this page---whether development and production of a Mixmaster model we could call Mixmaster Classic was possible: a design hybrid melding, for example, the motor shell and dial style of Model 7; the front motor cap, neck, and platform style of Model 3;  the handle and bowl-shift style of Models 11-12, while keeping the classic platter turntable of Models M4A-9? Perhaps, even, a resurrection of the classic old power transfer unit and (ok, we would settle for) just a few of the classic whacky attachments?

Well, guess what: Sunbeam sort of up and did it!

Maybe someone was thinking  precisely along the same line as I, though of course I cannot know whether I had inserted the proverbial ginger in the tail explicitly. But here, at left, is what Sunbeam Australia introduced in late 2002: Mixmaster Professional (official model designation: MX8800). Take a good look at this beauty**. Notice the beater spindles reference Models 7-12. Notice the front motor cap's implicative reference to Models 11 and 12. Notice the handle suggesting Models 3-9. Notice the identification decal style and lay references Model 12. Mixmaster Professional was a 12-speed machine, with variable mixing bowl speeds as well (thanks to a second small motor in the stand platform), and is a heavy metal die-cast body and works. This machine was even more attractive than the spanking-looking new-style Mixmaster that rolled off in 1998-99. Now, Sunbeam Australia has been a significant subsidiary operation since the 1930s. Australia's version of Model 9 (the first Mixmaster made and sold in Australia, beginning in 1949-50), in fact, was made and sold for about a full decade, to the tune of over 725,000 machines--damn near equaling the sales of U.S. Models 5-9 in their decade-plus production life.<> If Sunbeam Australia went the distance for  a product that went to the company's glory days and kicked them into the new century, it says something wonderful about what thousands elsewhere (including many who have seen and written me about this site) have known in their hips. Would the American parent take the hint? Was Mixmaster Professional a pilot fish testing waters, before Sunbeam dared introduce it in the company's native waters?

And then it came, from Sunbeam U.S.A.

Meet MIXMASTER HERITAGE!

 

You read me right. What Sunbeam Australia began as Mixmaster Professional, in 2003 Sunbeam Products in the United States unwrapped for the native home of the classic Mixmaster. This machine comes in four colour options: white, red, silver, and charcoal. (I know...I know...this isn't aqua, yellow, pink, and chrome.) It is made of die-cast metal, except of course for the handle and the Mix-Finder Dial. And it operates exactly as its elder sibling from Australia, complete with the second motor for the bowls. Mixmaster Heritage at long last is Sunbeam making a stride forward by returning to its apparent roots. Even if you still cannot spit out the beaters by pulling the handle down, even if there is still no word on any revival of any (never mind most or all) of the classic whacky attachments (c'mon, who would not want an ice cream freezer? a fruit-and-vegetable peeler?), let us give Sunbeam Products their due for acknowledging, at least stylistically and by way of construction, what we have known from the beginning:

The classic Mixmaster had It.
It had The Right Stuff.

And, it still does.

Do you own a classic Sunbeam Mixmaster, as I do?Turn yours on, to prepare part of your regular meal, or a pleasant taste treat. Listen to that distinctive soft purr on the first speed, as you fold everything in or hook up your power transfer unit with attachment. Now, bring it up to the needed fuller speed slowly. Take it in as you cook. It sings to you, it plays you a kind of chamber music in soft, sustained chords. You catch the whiff of that distinctive fragrance from the motor lubricants; there is no such distinct fragrance anywhere, from any other electric appliance you have ever known or owned. Blindfold yourself and your nose plus your ears will tell you there is a Mixmaster in service. And at once you are restored, yourself, to the simplicities you once knew, the sensibilities you once bore, the musics and the games and the lessons, the years of the joy, the love, the flavour, the pleasure in every meal, every treat composed by your parents' or your grandparents' elder Mixmaster+, guided by their loving hands.

Now you know nothing of stripped innocence or betrayal. Nothing of loss. Nothing of stolen or wasted youth, or of compromised or wasted adulthood. Maybe your own children will come scurrying in at the first chord from the motor and they, too, will want to join, and learn, and enjoy, just the way you did when Mom or Grandma or even Dad or Grandpa turned the dial. (And anyone who says men didn't enjoy this appliance as much as the womenfolk did, assuredly, is full of it.) Like an old friend, or a wizened, knowing loved one, a classic Sunbeam Mixmaster preparing a meal or a treat, even today, promises you that heartbreak does not endure; pain is not forever; whatever your mistakes, you will recover; whatever your crises, you will overcome, and learn. The road goes ever onward and upward, the field reaches ever broadly, but you will find your way home again. And, home can never die.

* - Model 11 Christmas ad from 1956; © Sunbeam Products, Inc. From 1956 issue of Look. .

** - Mixmaster Professional, as shown in Sunbeam Australia promotional literature. Image copyright ©2002 Sunbeam Corporation Ltd., Australia, a subsidiary of GUD Holdings Ltd. Mixmaster Heritage, imagery copyright ©2003 Sunbeam Products.

+ - Models 11C and 12C flanking Sunbeam Coffeemaster, photograph courtesy of Jeff Parker.

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