Sunbeam Mixmaster - The Kitchen Boulevardier

From almost the moment the Sunbeam marque premiered in 1910, its appliances were promoted by the Chicago Flexible Shaft Company as "The Best Electric Appliances Made." It remained the marque's slogan until the late 1950s-early 1960s.* Ivar Jepson certainly took it seriously enough---for most of his tenure running Sunbeam research and development, there was never more than one model in any Sunbeam appliance category produced at any time (exception: the Shavemaster electric razor). He prided himself and his team as greatly for excellence as for profitability, and he bent the marque philosophy around the former guiding the latter. It was a difficult business, especially, to try proving the slogan wrong when it came to the flagship Mixmaster. The irrevocable, immortal proof was born as Model 5 in August 1939.

The Mixmaster's further stylistic refinement continued with tasteful, arresting subtlety.† The motor shell sides still featured dashes of Model 3's art deco detailing. The chrome vertical vent grille yielded to a horizontal grille, six bisected vent slits, with rear motor ventilation integrated into a ring of vents around the speed dial axis. The dial itself became a hemisphere with a sectioned speed guide next to the number of all ten speeds. Called the Mix-Finder Dial®, it made the Mixmaster very likely the first such appliance to feature such an operating guide right on the switch; rivals Hamilton Beach (its trim-looking Model G's "Mixguide"), Kitchen Aid, and Dormeyer (its Power Chef and Meal Maker mixers) would introduce full mixing guides on their machines within the coming decade. (Another rival, Knapp-Monarch, introduced a rear-mounted speed dial, shaped like a pointed artillery shell head, on its late 1940s Speed Mix mixer, a machine which looked rather like it wanted to be a Mixmaster when it grew up.) The beater spindle tips remained unpainted steel; the beaters still ejected by way of washer-type shaft rings. But Model 5 would prove the last of the classic Mixmasters to eject its beaters that way. The curved handle now featured rounded, soft edges, without the lengthwise ridges or knobbed rear taper of Model 3.

This was the first of a Mixmaster series that secured the appliance's standing as the all-time generic American appliance nickname. It remains almost the most familiar style of the classic Mixmaster. Model 5†† also personified the best America of its time: a twinkling eye toward the future without forgetting the prime of what brought it to this point in the first place. Most kitchen appliances looked stodgy, stylistically hesitant, or stylistically silly. If Model 3 was the playboy of the countertop, no questions asked, Model 5 was the kitchen boulevardier. And the American kitchen was never quite the same place it may have been, once upon a time. Considering the tastefully arresting styling of Model 3, that was a case of achieving the near-impossible. But style points get you only so far when it's time for the job at hand, especially when you are designing and producing something intended to do as many jobs at home as might be required in a quality restaurant.

And the Mixmaster didn't just eliminate a huge percentage of kitchen drudgery, it downright exterminated it. In any way, shape, or form one cared to illustrate, Model 5 was a classic kitchen showpiece. (Is that more than another mere nod toward the nation's surging car-craziness we can see with the front grille?) And if an owner took the motor off the stand to use it as a portable, said owner couldn't help noticing the Mixmaster motor was somewhat lighter in weight than the competition...and a lot less awkward to control, especially with an easier grip on the new full-cap speed dial.

Translation: Model 5 saw its snappy predecessor and raised it to the tenth power. Even with the clouds of war hanging over America's head, plenty of households brought Model 5 home to new families, people getting their first gander at what a Mixmaster could do. Perhaps they heard it from friends, relatives, and neighbours who already owned Mixmasters. Perhaps their curiosity finally caught up with the dying machines already in their kitchens. Whatever it was, Model 5 caught America's eye and ear just as profoundly as its predecessors. As the Mixmaster passed its first decade, it was hands-down the most popular appliance of its kind. Amazingly, it took a mere twenty months for the company to see and raise Model 5, slightly but memorably...

†† - Model 5 with white bowl and juicer attachment, Model 5 view from rear, photographs courtesy of rickyhamby.

Fibber McGee and Molly, NBC: To each other, they were real-life husband and wife actor-comedians James and Marian Jordan. To the world they were known as self-delusional, gullible Fibber McGee and his gently needling but loving wife, Molly. The question: What was all that debris which fell out of Fibber McGee's closet every time he opened the door? The answer: That's a good question. (We should probably feel sorriest for their propmaster!) Listen...

Chime Time: You don't really have to ask whose chimes were these...do you?

"...the desire of our two peoples never to go to war again": Neville Chamberlain. 30 September 1938. The Munich Pact, and the separate peace proclamation between Britain and Hitler's Germany. To Chamberlain the proceedings brought "peace in our time." One day later, Hitler annexed Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. Six months later, Czechoslovakia itself. Less than one year later, World War II began.