The Minnesota Farm Woman

When I was a kid, I really, really, REALLY wanted an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas. Everybody had one. That is, everybody but me. Mom thought they were silly and extravagant, and said, “You can bake all the cakes you want, right here in our REAL oven, and NOT from a mix!”. It just wasn’t the same as watching that little cake rise magically, just from the heat of a light bulb. Yum! Well, to be honest, the cakes weren’t all that yum, but they were magical, anyway. A year or two later, my parents did get me the much-wanted Thingmaker Creepy Crawlers toy, in which we mixed up oozy and brightly colored Plastigoop, poured it in molds, and placed it on an electric hot plate where it baked and hardened into rubbery bugs. My sister and I had a set called Fun Flowers that made…you guessed it….very groovy flowers, and one called Fright Factory that made scary stuff like fake scars and skeletons. To this day, I can think back and almost smell the hot chemical plastic odor. It was totally fun, and I only got a few burns and blisters on my hands from trying to remove the bugs from the molds too early. These days, nothing like that would ever be approved for children to use, but we really did have hours of fun, just like it said on the Creepy Crawlers box. I dressed my wounds with another of my usual stocking stuffers: A box of Band Aids. To this day, I think the only reason I got Creepy Crawlers was because my dad was a Biology teacher and thought it might be en educational toy. A year or two later, Mattel came up with another great idea called Incredible Edibles, which were like Creepy Crawlers, except instead of plain old rubbery plastic, an edible rubbery plastic called Gobbletygoop was squirted into the mold and baked to yummy perfection. I really, really, REALLY wanted an Incredible Edibles set. Mom thought it was silly and extravagant, and said. “Who wants to eat that junk anyway? It can’t possibly be good for you!” She was right. Incredible Edibles tasted like a sweetened rubber eraser and stuck to my teeth. I know this because many of my friends got Incredible Edibles that year, and they shared. I wouldn’t doubt it one bit if we glowed in the in the dark after eating it, too. Mom was right. A generation later, which happened more quickly than I ever thought it would, my daughter asked for an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas. She really, really, REALLY wanted one. Yes, they still made them, and in fact, the Easy Bake Oven has been one of the #1 selling toys of all time, no thanks to my family. You are probably thinking that I ran out and got her one right away to make up for the one I didn’t get. It’s kind of strange, but somehow, no matter how you mix our genetic Gobbletygook and no matter how long it takes us to get done, we turn into our parents. I told her that she could make all the cakes she wanted, right in our kitchen in a REAL oven. I could almost bet that her kids won’t find one under the Christmas tree, either.