Sunbeam Mixmaster - The Worthy Competition

The Chicago Flexible Shaft Company's Sunbeam Mixmaster rewrote the book on designing, making, and selling kitchen mixers - indeed, any of what we now call "consumer goods" to a Depression-addled nation looking for affordable quality, versatility, and style. Its near-instant success, and almost immediate adoption as a national icon-cum-mechanical family pet, jerked the competition into waking up and keeping up.

The Mixmaster may well have spearheaded a striking expansion of American household conveniences and other consumer goods as the Depression faded away, the New Deal took its (some dare say questionable) grip, and the clouds of World War II loomed ahead. And a good many came very close, indeed, to the Mixmaster's special position in the American home's heart. Many of them found very loyal users over the years - and many of them are almost as collectible and valuable as the Mixmaster. Together, they represent an era of American manufacturing prowess of which to be proud - and to mourn for its passing. Through the courtesy of numerous fellow aficionados and collectors, we give the Mixmaster's noble competition its due. But since this is his site and his rules, your chronicler is picking the ones he considers the best - or, the most memorable, anyway - of the nobles.

Hamilton Beach Model A, 1925. The company created by L.H. Hamilton and Chester Beach introduced this mixer in the same year that the Chicago Flexible Shaft Company hired Ivar Jepson for its design department. With its industrial-looking motor and its unique, twin-rod stand mount, Hamilton Beach's Model A Food Mixer and Extractor (as it was called) is a very rare collectible find. The photograph itself comes from a magazine advertisement. Collectors, depending on whether the motor shell ID plate featured a red or a green background, call it either Red Badge or Green Badge. From the outset of its manufacture of kitchen mixers, Hamilton Beach, like Sunbeam, would mount their food mixer heads horizontally. Note also another Hamilton Beach trademark: the single-piece beater assembly, which mounted the twin beaters on a brace which attached to the mixer's beater spindles. They weren't the only ones to do it - General Electric used a similar rig for its late-20s mixer - but they stayed the course with the beater rig style well through the 1960s. It wasn't entirely aesthetically pleasing (Hamilton Beach mixers, until Model H in the 1950s, tended to look as though in dire need of reconstructive orthodonture!), but Hamilton Beach users swore by the assembly's effectiveness. And still do.

Fitzgerald Magic Maid, 1920s-early 1930s. In several variations, to my knowledge, this was probably the most striking-looking vertical headed kitchen mixer of them all, other than the Dormeyer Mix-Rite of the same era and a sleek chrome model Dormeyer whipped out for a short run in the early 1950s. Like many vertical-head mixers, the Magic Maid flipped upside down for using the attachments you see here. But unlike the Dormeyer (remounting on its stand) or General Electric (rotating on an axis) vertical motor mixers, the Magic Maid flipped up, over, and back on its stand, all the way back and upside down behind the platform. Its unique power transfer unit for attachment options mounted directly to the motor - a user simply removed the beater drive unit to do it. The bowl turntable also featured a unique smaller turntable-within-the-turntable for using the small bowl, rather than just mounting it centered on the master turntable. With such collectors as my friends in the WACEM club on Yahoo! Clubs (it stands for We Actually Collect Electric Mixers), the Magic Maid is one of the most popular vertical-head mixers of them all; those who have owned or restored them swear by its top quality performance. In your chronicler's estimation, it has perhaps the most aesthetic distinctiveness of the vertical head breed.

Dormeyer Mixrite,1930s. I know extremely little about this mixer; I was sent a scan of this advertisement some time back and was struck by its distinctive appearance. For one, I have never seen any stand mixer other than this Mixrite with a handle in the mounting neck, and at first glance it makes the neck resemble a beer stein. For another, it shows the first traces of an end to the heavy-industrial look of earlier Dormeyer mixers. (The company began as a subsidiary of the MacLeod Manufacturing Company; one of its earliest mixers was a handheld "Dormeyer Electric Beater" which used a Hamilton Beach motor.) At first appearance, the Mixrite appears to be a kind of genteel cousin to the Fitzgerald Magic Maid. Blurry though the scan is, you can see Dormeyer indulging a shard of hyperbole for itself - it may or may not have been the "Pioneer Manufacturer" of electric food mixers (Hamilton Beach buffs just might give you an argument!), but Dormeyer's true strength was in its heavy durability. They didn't invent or revolutionise the appliance so much as they simply made them stronger than many.

Hamilton Beach Model C, 1935. I'm skipping a model because Model B was downright ugly in spite of its quality. Maybe Hamilton Beach itself felt the same way; maybe it caught a Sunbeam burr under its saddle. Whichever, they produced this more attractive machine at the time Sunbeam was rolling out the last of its smaller-headed Mixmasters (Model K). It was approximately the same size, and almost as handy. The fishtail-back stand platform on Model B continued with Model C - and would continue with the slightly larger Model D, after which Hamilton Beach went to a teardrop-shaped platform similar to the Mixmaster's but with a pair of small fins toward the rear. But as a compact mixer with good firepower and handsome appearance, Model C earned its place as a worthy Mixmaster competitor. This mixer seems to be a particular favourite among Hamilton Beach collectors, and justifiably so.

Kitchen Aid Model 3B, 1936. The home appliance division of the Hobart restaurant equipment makers crafted a durable piece of machine - but the familiar Kitchen Aid trademark of the counter-rotating single beater, paddle, or whip, doesn't keep the style of Model 3B from saying Mixmaster Influence all over it, except for the front-mounted attachment power driver. (Dormeyer adopted a similar mount more famously in the late 1940s.) It was an impressive and understandable refinement - the earliest Kitchen Aid machines are, if anything, even more heavily industrial-looking than their competitors. This Model 3B resembles a clean, no-trim version of its Mixmaster model namesake (well, numbersake). Kitchen Aid today is as plastic-dominated as Sunbeam, making this Model 3 perhaps its most truly collectible mixer. In terms of aesthetic appeal, no Kitchen Aid mixer has ever come even close to Model 3B's handsome lines and edges. But to its credit, Kitchen Aid has at least kept some of the functional versatility (with at least six or seven available attachment options) Sunbeam has long (and wrongly) surrendered.

Dormeyer Power Chef, 1948. The standard stock in trade of Sunbeam's crosstown Chicago rival was megastrong appliances (they made an electric drill second to none, by the way). The problem was that, with a small handful of exceptions, Dormeyer didn't always have the hang of combining durability and muscle with design aesthetic, without sacrificing points off either. When they did, though, a machine like this was the result. No Dormeyer appliance ever came this close to matching the Mixmaster's union of mechanical and performance power with such a strikingly attractive appearance - not even its much more successful 1950s successor. The original Power Chef is far more streamlined, more attractively sculpted and trimmed, than the far more familiar, stodgier-looking 1950s beastie by the same name. This Power Chef also features a slightly unusual mixer head mount - the neck bends slightly rightward and the cradled motor tilts further rightward and up. (The neck cradle is a feature many lighter-weight stand mixers now in use, decades after Dormeyer tried and abandoned the idea.) And, instead of the familiar red switch running the mixing guide on the side of the motor, a slim moving dial ring behind the guide fired this beauty up. (The advertising slogan: "You Dial It - Dormeyer Does It.") What you see here is a restoration done by my friend vtakro, who says the metal-on-metal tightness of the mounting makes it difficult to maintain the paint on the machine rig. That doesn't stop it from being a machine for Dormeyer to have been proud of. And it is probably one of the rarest and most valuable finds for Dormeyer buffs who favour their post-World War II products.