Heh, that happened to me once. I was helping my dad run a new electrical circuit to the bathroom and a couple other places. Ended up turning the wall socket into a 220 v death trap. I just used the hairdryer into it to make sure the circuit was live. It was totally awesome.
I used to have a chefmate mixer. I got metal flakes in the whipped cream and no meringue the 3rd time I tried to use it. I didn’t keep the receipt or the box so I just brought it back to Wal*Mart and told them to keep their $, but they needed to dispose of the thing for me as an apology.
Well written, sir. Out of that, this caught my eye, as I assumed I was the only person on this board that was redneck enough to recognize the smell of possum shit.
I was feeling sort of blue before coming to the Dope today, thanks for salvaging my day. I laughed so hard at the reviews and the thread that I’ve got a pain in my side. A good pain.
Now I’m picturing the manufacturer’s response at hearing their hair dryer had flames shooting out of it - “Well, you wanted to heat up your wet hair. Sheesh.”
Since I wasn’t actually blow-drying my hair when the flames shot out (it warned me with a strange death-rattle first), I thought it was kind of awesome, too. “Hey, my hair dryer just caught fire! Cool!”
ETA: It occurs to me that you and I must never, ever do home renovation projects together. “Hey, what would happen if we plugged THIS into THIS?”
Let us contemplate the bigger question - how much does this mixer actually cost to manufacture?
Target sells it for a couple pennies under $6, but then on sale for $3.
Thus we can assume it probably costs about $2-2.50 wholesale.
The wholeseller makes some profit - so deduct 50 cents and now the product actually costs about $1.50 - $2.00 to make.
How in the hell did they create anything that even resembles a mixer for a buck and a half?
I have see plugs at Home Depot that cost more than this entire mixer.
So I guess we can safely assume that the old adage, “you get what you pay for” would be an apt slogan for the packaging of this product?
When I was a kid, we didn’t have mixers. We had sticks! And hammers if we needed to pound stuff together.
And there wasn’t anything to mix! There was meat, and there was potatoes. Anything that needed to be done to them, you could do it with a stick or a hammer or both.
And fire was never a problem! Either your house or one of your neighbors’ houses was always on fire for one reason or another! You could cook anything just by carrying it through the front door.
’
If you were lucky enough to HAVE a door, that is!
I believe I have exactly one Chefmate product in my house. It’s this enamled cast iron Dutch oven/casserole. I bought it when I saw it on sale for $30 at the local target. I swear to God, it’s as good as either of my $200 Staub cast iron cocottes (Christmas gifts–as much as I love to cook, I would not ever spend that much money on cookware, especially something as simple and straightforward as enameled cast iron.)
I wonder if, when the person called customer service about the flaming mixer, they were told to unplug it and refrain from using it again…
our microwave started sparking one time, so my mother unplugged it and went running out of the kitchen, screaming. I called Sharp, rep told me to unplug the microwave…told him I did…he told me not to use the microwave any more…Seriously??? I can imagine that they had a lawsuit saying that the kitchen caught fire because someone decided to re-try a sparking microwave…sad
Who in their right mind spends only SIX DOLLARS on a mixer? Obviously the magic number is EIGHT DOLLARS which is what I spent on mine years ago and it’s running well to this day. So obvious.
I just realized that I use a Chefmate toaster! I’m sure it was more than $6 and it seems to work okay. Still, there are some suspicious-looking scorch marks on the edge of one of the toast slots. If it ever starts to emit flames, I’ll try to get a photo.
That’s the thing about brands like “Chefmate”. They don’t make a damn thing. They are just a brand owner that orders very cheap stuff from manufacturers in China and has them put “Chefmate” branding on. So what you get is a lottery.
Hammers? We used to dream of hammers. Any pounding we did was with our skulls against the ground, or occasionally a rock if we were lucky enough to find one.
