Easy Bake Oven Kenner 1964

1964 must have been a bad year for insurance companies. Mattel released the Thingmaker & Kenner released the Easy Bake oven. Both if left unattended could cook a house as easy as it could make an ugly bug or a cake. I used to drop water on my Thingmaker stove to watch the water dance like it was on a griddle.



Ol' easy was a little less dangerous because you were cooking with a light bulb. It also meant baking a cake took a lonnnnnnnng time. You could read War & Peace before a cake was done, so it was pretty easy to lose interest, leave it for just a little while to watch TV and an hour or so later wonder why that funny smell was coming from your room. On the lucky days it was just a burned cake.

In spite of the potential hazard, the easy bake is still made today. The last oven had a recall. Kids were catching their hand inside the oven and getting burned. I'm sure there are thousands of boomers who could share old war wounds with the new kids.

Like all appliances, Kenner's oven has been through a few changes. In the 60's the colors were yellow, aqua & green and In the 70's Kenner teamed with Betty Crocker. Kids got a redesigned oven in avocado & orange. Now the ovens are a single purple & pink combo making sure no self respecting young man gets any chef time. For boys there's still ants and a magnifying glass but that's more searing than actual cooking.



Kenner also made a few more 'easy' products. There was the Easy Bake popcorn popper, and The Easy Bake Potato Chip Maker. Extending the domesticity of the 'Easy' brand, Kenner also introduced the Easy Wash Dishwasher and the Easy Curl hair setting kit. I'm probably missing a few other easy sets, but since I'm in kind of a hurry as i write this, I'll leave the easy humor to you



How will the Easy Kake Oven do in the next decade ? What will Kenner use for a heating element when standard light bulbs become a thing of the past? I don't know but I'm going to go make a batch of square pancakes with my old Thingmaker while I think about it.



This is an early Easy Bake Oven commercial. You just have to watch a Jiffy Pop ad first.


I don't know what scares me more about this commercial. The vacant little Stepford kid or the announcer on Qualudes. You make the call.

I can't figure out whether these guys are pulling my leg or this thing really works. It sounds cool but it's going to take a fifth of something expensive to get your IT guy to install one at the office.

Campus Cuties

Starting in 1963, Marx toys brought out a line of plastic army men in a 6 in. size. The figures were released individually and originally sold for less than a dime. Like all soft plastic soldiers of the time, they had no articulation but the attention to detail set them apart. Faces showed emotion and you could see things like individual feathers in an Indian headdress. These new big figs towered over other plastic soldiers but they were to cool to pass up & kids began collecting these giants in plastic.

To get the girls as interested as the boys, Marx introduced "Campus Cuties" a series of "mod" female figures in fashion outfits and poses. The cuties were the same 6 in. size and sold individually like the soldiers, but the marketing behind the figures was a little different.

With Marx soldiers, you were lucky if they came with the Marx name or logo on the bottom but each of the cuties had the the name of the figures pose stamped in. In a time when toy companies were branding every doll with some cute individual name, it's interesting that Marx decided to ignore names and define the figures by their poses.

There were two only waves of cuties ever released and both were in 1964. There were eight figures in each wave with the names below.

Series 1

Dinner for Two
Lazy Afternoon
Lodge Party
Nitey Night
On The Beach
On The Town
Shopping Anyone?
Stormy Weather

Series 2

A Touch of Mink
Belle of the Ball
Bermuda Holiday
Day at the Races
Night at the Opera
Our Girl Friday
Saturday Afternoon
Twist Party

While the alliteration in the name is kinda clever, it is fun to point out that there is very little school activity going on. Not one of the figures is carrying a book, teaching, or learning in any way. They aren't playing a sport, cheer leading, or even pledging. If Marx had waited a few years, they could have had cuties with names like "Sit-in", "Bra Burning" or "Woodstock". Maybe someone could revive the series with "Campus Cuties Gone Wild". Sorry, that was the caffeine talking.

If you're interested in collecting cuties, you should know the first series is much easier to find than the second. There are also color variations. All the original figures were a sort of silly putty pink. In the 70's, Marx was sold to a faceless clueless multinational conglomerate who moved many of the molds to Mexico. Since then, the cuties have appeared in a light yellow and a cream color. The only reason any of this matters is economic. If you're paying more than 6-8 bucks each and they
aren't pink, keep looking.

Yes the cuties do have a web presence and thank you for asking. Matt Hinrichs has a Campus Cuties webpage here. with pix of all the cuties & other cutie stuff.

Fred Gwynne

Fred Gwynne was a modern renaissance man.

With his deep baritone voice, he was an accomplished actor and singer performing in plays and musicals on and off Broadway. He was a sculptor and painter holding a one man exhibition of his art and he also wrote and illustrated nearly a dozen children's books. With all of this talent, it's funny to think he's best remembered as TV's Frankendad.

Frederick Hubbard Gwynne was born on July 10, 1926 in New York City. His father was a stockbroker, his mother a former cartoonist. His father died from complications during routine surgery when Fred was five .

He attended a prep school where he got his first taste of the stage, enlisted in the Navy after graduation and entered Harvard on the G.I.Bill.

Gwynne took full advantage of his years at Harvard. He majored in English, studied art, became a founding member of the Krokodiloes [Harvard's oldest a capella group], wrote and illustrated for the Harvard Lampoon and was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club. It was the wacky Hasty Pudding productions that kindled his interest in theater.

In 1951 he graduated Harvard, married his first wife Jean Reynard and moved to New York to pursue an acting career.

Gwynne got a job at the J Walter Thompson Advertising Agency and worked there for the next five years writing copy by day and acting in theater and television in the evenings. He made his movie debut as an uncredited punk in "On the Waterfront" in 1954.

In 1955, Gwynne made a guest appearance on The Phil Silvers Show as Private Honigan. The character was well liked and Gwynne was called back to guest star in a few more episodes. When Phil Silvers producer Nat Hiken was casting for a new show, he offered Gwynne the role of police officer Francis Muldoon in "Car 54 Where Are You?". The police sitcom ran two seasons.

When Car 54 was cancelled, Six foot five inch Fred Gwynne was cast as Herman Munster, the green tinted head of the Munster clan. A 15 minute color pilot was pitched to the networks and the show got a strong maybe from CBS.

In the pilot episode, Gwynne plays a rather skinny Herman with a different cast. Adjustments were made to the show and it's cast, a second short pilot episode was shot in black & white to show to sponsors and the show was finally put into production.

The Munsters premiered Sept. 24, 1965 and ran for two seasons. For 70 episodes, Fred Gwynne endured hours of daily makeup, four inch lifts and pounds of padding to help transform him into one of the goofiest, dads in sitcom history.

While the all black & white show has become an enduring classic, the role was Hollywood poison for Gwynne who couldn't seem to shake Herman loose. Casting directors said he was married too closely to his Munster persona in the public eye. Fred turned back to the stage and his art and rode out the short sightedness of Hollywood.

In 1981, when he was called to do a reunion show for The Munsters, he asked for a huge amount of cash and surprisingly, the producers said yes. Gwynne played Herman one last time in Revenge of the Munsters.

In the 80's Gwynne delivered some great character performances in Cotton Club [1984], The Boy Who Could Fly [1986], Fatal Attraction [1986], Pet Sematary [1989] and his final role as a southern judge trying Joe Pesci's case in My Cousin Vinny [1992].

After My Cousin Vinny, Gwynne purchased a farm in Maryland and was in semi retirement when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died on July 2, 1993 just a week away from his 67th birthday.

While there was a decade or more where Gwynne wouldn't talk about the Munsters, the silence was more of a career move than an outright hatred of the character. In a 1979 interview after a career of successes in other fields, Gwynne summed up his Munsters experience; "Funny thing, yesterday morning I found my youngest son and daughter watching the rerun of an old [Munsters] episode and I said, 'My God, THAT'S not still on, is it?' Well, even so, I was very lucky and it was great fun to be as much of a household product as something like Rinso. I almost wish I could do it all over again."

There isn't a fan of the Munsters who doesn't feel the same way