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In September 1932, the Mixmaster underwent its first full styling and mechanical upgrade,* to Model M4J. It introduced two of the Mixmaster's most identifiable signature features: the rear-end speed dial, and the drop-right handle (this first one was rather similar-looking to that of the original Ironmaster) to accommodate mounting the juicer attachment. Out: rear motor shell bolts and neck-mounted speed switch. In: Divided half-circle motor vents ringing the dial, operating first three (Model M4J) and then five speeds (Model K**). The motor now detached for portable use and, despite its all-metal construction and considerable weight, was quite a bit lighter than its competitors to boot. The beaters remained the long-shaft, short-round, banjo style somewhat common among most American kitchen mixers of the time; the motor remained a horizontal configuration, against the vertical style still predominant among most American household mixers. M4J was a logical step up from the original line's developments. †

Jepson and his design team aimed for labour-saving, quality, and durable performance convenience first and foremost. But they never let that obstruct making an attractive appliance - to the eyes and ears alike. From the outset, the Sunbeam Mixmaster looked and sounded as though it belonged in not just the contemporary home but in the home of the near-future. It never truly bore the heavily industrial look of nearly all its competition at the time, not even with the protruding gearbox chamber and front plate.

You see in the photograph below left a power transfer unit and meat grinder - Model M4C had been the first Mixmaster for which a power unit was made; the mount configuration was slightly different beginning with Model M4F. Chicago Flexible Shaft Company literature, however, took pains to point out that, if an attachment needed the power transfer unit, it could be used with any Mixmaster taking it, since the company never altered the measurements of either the power unit's drive nut or those attachments' drive hubs.

Note that this grinder is quite different from the attachment that is probably most familiar to those who grew up with the classic Mixmaster. The hopper is  shorter and flared, braced by a metal safety clutch rod which actually stopped the grinder if you opened the top hopper ring. ("That way," says a virtuoso Mixmaster restorer and friend to your chronicler, "there is no way to grind fingers or toes." Don't ask what made him think about grinding toes!) This grinder was of a style introduced in May 1933, discontinued after one modification in September 1935; the first Mixmaster grinders featured capless, short flared hoppers. But one of the Mixmaster's most enduring features was the remarkable, growing, and often whacky offering of attachments. By the conclusion of Model K's production run (1935), these were the attachments available for any Mixmaster owner, with the Mixmaster models hosting their premieres in parentheses: meat grinder/food chopper (M4C), coffee grinder (Model M4H), can opener (M4H), knife sharpener (M4H), polishing wheel (M4H), slicer/shredder (M4J/K), fruit and vegetable peeler (M4J/K), drink mixer (M4J/K), ice cream freezer motor (M4J/K), butter churn (K), and pea sheller (K). There were even attachments for the attachments: a Mixmaster owner could buy a far larger reamer for the juicer attachment in order to squeeze fresh grapefruit juice; and, a horn-shaped sausage stuffer which fit onto the reception end of the meat grinder.

† - The vertical style graduated from both the type of single-beater electric mixer in which the motor head sat fitted directly onto a glass jar and such early offerings as the aforesaid first Hamilton Beach machine. In fact, a single-beater model made by Manning Bowman had a motor which resembled the more familiar vertical-head stand mixer style but was fitted to sit through the lid of a large jar. These mixers were very popular earlier in the 20th century and are valuable collectibles today. See Antique Electric Mixers, to which your chronicler linked on the previous page.

A Chicago rival, the A.F. Dormeyer Corporation (formerly the MacLeod Company), produced vertical motor mixers beginning with both a small, hand-held machine with a drink mixer-like motor (made by Hamilton Beach, no less!), and a square-boxed hand-held mixer whose beater assembly actually made it possible for this mixer to stand freely while operating. (It also stood flat upside down for juicing, with an additional stand-leg fixture for support.) Dormeyer introduced its first stand-mounted vertical head mixer - the striking-looking Mix-Rite - in the late 1920s-early 1930s, and actually kept vertical-head stand mixers (usually three-speed models) in production well through the early 1950s, though they had become one of the company's more budget-line offerings by the mid-to-late 1940s.  The Mix-Rite featured a handled stand neck so carved as to give the initial appearance of a kind of slim beer stein. Your chronicler has seen this mixer only by way of a magazine advertisement of the era; one suspects a Mix-Rite found today would prove an invaluable - and expensive - kitchen collectible.

Perhaps the most familiar vertical-head style kitchen mixer, other than Dormeyer's Electric Maid of the 1930s, was the behemoth General Electric Triple-Whip, of the 1930s and 1940s. It featured a novel three-beater configuration, aligned to the length of the stand platform, which also took a hint from the Mixmaster and aligned the rearmost beater flush to the bowl wall. It also required no detachment from the stand (though you could do so to use it as a portable) to flip the motor upside down for attachment mounting - the motor revolved on a short-stub axis. The bad news - this mixer made perhaps the most unconscionably grating racket, even on low speeds, of any electric mixer in American history.

Other companies making such vertical-head mixers included those noted previously: Vidrio, Knapp-Monarch, Fitzgerald (its unique-looking Magic Maid), Universal (its memorable Mixabeater), and Westinghouse, as much for such retail chains as Sears, Roebuck and Company (its Kenmore marque) as under their own marques. Even the earliest Kitchen Aid home mixer produced by the Hobart Corporation was a vertical head model - and probably the most industrial-looking beast of them all, if you didn't count a short-lived one produced by the A.C. Gilbert Corporation. Kitchen Aid rolled out that vertical head mixer in the early 1930s; this, too, was a huge, ponderous-looking beast, though the marque in short order learned to distinguish between the home and the commercial bakery.

When Hamilton Beach began making household stand mixers, it used a horizontal head mount from the beginning, with its Model A of 1925. That mixer mounted on a distinctive stand of two steel rods and a flat round platform stand. Hamilton Beach Model B (debut: 1932) mounted on a fishtailed, jointed-neck platform. Both mixers looked only too much like industrial drills. But, perhaps catching a Mixmaster burr under its saddle, the Racine, Wisconsin manufacturer rectified that with its similarly small but very attractive and sturdy Model C in 1935. At first glance, it looks almost like an attempt to streamline the design of the Sunbeam Model M4J. It's one of the most popular collectible finds for Hamilton Beach buffs.

‡ - Kitchen Aid, General Electric, and Hamilton Beach also offered such attachments for their kitchen mixers at the time the Mixmaster premiered. In short order, many if not most kitchen mixers did so as well.

The Fitzgerald Magic Maid saw them and raised them one - it lifted and came back down apposite its normal neck position, and - uniquely - its beater spindles detached in a single small driver unit to be replaced by a power unit driving directly off the worm gears. General Electric, however, kept the upside-down attachment configuration into the late 1950s, with its horizontal-head Triple-Whip.  Sunbeam, of course, could barely resist making a point of boasting in Mixmaster advertising  that - unlike those mixers - you didn't have to turn the Mixmaster upside down to use your attachments!

Hamilton Beach, though, had perhaps the most unique power transfer unit of them all - a free-standing, heavy iron unit, heavy enough that a slight redesign could have produced an independent appliance in its own right. As it was, the Hamilton Beach freestanding power transfer unit effectively made the mixer motor head the attachment - a Hamilton Beach mixer slid off its stand neck and slid onto a plate at the top of the power unit, with the left front beater spindle turning the unit's drive shaft. By the turn to the 1950s, however, Hamilton Beach modified this unit to a model which mounted on the stand neck, though keeping the same mixer motor mount up top. The disadvantage - pitching the motor at such a height might have posed a risk of accidentally tipping the machine over, if a user pushed too hard into the meat grinder or slicer/shredder. Assuredly not a strong marriage of form to function.