Recently the lid to my Corning Pyrex Visionware (clear tempered glass cookware) dutch oven shattered (off topic: totally my fault as I tried to wash it in hot water too soon after taking it out of the fridge). No problem, sez I, that’s stuff’s everywhere. 'Cept it’s not. Seems Corning stopped making glass cookware in the 90’s and it’s become a collectors item.
The reason, according to numerous collectors boards, is the the government specifically asked Corning to stop making the Visionware cookware because crystal meth makers need to use it in the process. This sounds suspiciously like an urban legend to me (alread checked Snopes tho’). I can’t believe a company would just stop making something there’s a demand for for such a silly reason (couldn’t meth makers just get glass stuff other places like lab supply companies?). I’d more readily believe it was pulled because of problems with it unexpectedly shattering like I had.
Anyway, (long meandering post aside) anyone have any idea what the real story is? I haven’t found anything conclusive on googling. And why do meht makers need clear cookware anyway?
Seems unlikely. What I remember is that the stuff actually wasn’t that good. You * could * see your food cooking, but the tradeoff was the occasional unexpected spontaneous shattering of the cookware; it wasn’t as resistant to dropping and rough treatment as metal pans; it was hard to clean; and it had odd cooking properties due to its high heat retention.
In addition, Corning pretty much dropped a lot of its domestic cookware products in preference to getting into the fiber optics market.
I just had a gander at eBay, (looked for corning vision in completed items) and the stuff only seems to sell about 50% of the time, and not for any sort of prices that might indicate a black market use for it.
I had some once and didn’t much care for it. I don’t think there’s anything nefarious about its disappearance from the market.
Yeah, you can still get it on Ebay, it just seems a little expensive. I found the lid I need for $4 plus $8 shipping which annoys me as it was only around $2 when I bought it.
I like it 'cause it’s glass so I don’t have any irrational worries about something leaching into my food (I know this is a really stupid fear expecially since over 50% of my meals pre-prepared and cooked on who knows what anyway) plus I think the glass is really easy to clean as you can scrub as hard as you want with almost anything and it won’t scratch.
I don’t think the rumor amounts to anything either but wanted to see if anyone knew anything conclusive.
Um, perhaps I’m misunderstanding something, but my local grocery store still has shelves full of Pyrex cookware available for sale. Or is this about a particular subset of the Pyrex genre that has been discontinued?
I remember the visionware sets and, quite honestly did not even notice they were gone. Looking around I managed to find a 2qt cassarole dish at an east cost chain called Boscov’s. No big dutch ovens, no 1qt sauce pans, nothing (still plenty of bakeware though). IIRC, the 2qt dish was the one I used the most anyway, mostly around the holidays or in the microwave. Always were a lot easier to keep clean than plastic.
Thrift stores are often over loaded with this stuff and you can pick it up for a dollar or two. If it were in demand by meth cookers I doubt this would be the case.
What I ment to add was, in addition to searching for Pyrex in stores, I searched in as many news sources as I could think of and there was nothing about discontinuing them due to meth labs, actually there was nothing at all anywhere. My WAG is they cut down the line to what was moving and discontinued the rest, nothing to either confirm or deny the rumor.
Smeghead - I did find a lot of bowls, baking dishes and measuring cups, but only the one cassarole dish and nothing for stove top use.
It’s hard to sell on ebay and expensive to ship. I imagine most of it got given away or donated to thrifts. Plus lots of it probably just got broken over time. THe glass stovetop pots and pans are probably subject to rougher handling and direct contact with the stove elements so I imagine there are relatively fewer of them left just due to breakage.
You could just as well have irrational fears that some additive in the glass was leaching into your food; glass isn’t necessarily a pure or inert item (although it may be more or less the case with the kind of glass used in this cookware).
Went to the CPSC website and found a bunch of complaints about corning vision ware here. . A bunch of PDF files of complaints collected by them, but no mention of recalls.
I grew up in a tiny town, moved away, and then moved back.
While I was gone, apparently many “meth labs” cropped up and were busted by the police (thankfully.)
These dumbbleeps that I knew of running these meth labs were barely smart enough to read their name, much less care about what they were producing their FILTH with.
I would bet that this is some urban legend, but then again, I have no proof.
Pyrex is usually used for lab glassware obviously useful for meth production, and I wonder if there was some confusion between that “pyrex” and kitchen pyrex
According to Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (Volume 18), Donald Stookey, a scientist at Corning Glass Works accidentally created a product called Pyroceram in 1952. Corning had been making Pyrex since 1915 as glass cookware and had no plans for using for using Pyroceram in cookware. Instead, Corning marketed Pyroceram in national defense. Pyroceram was used for missile nose cones. The same technology was later used to create the Space Shuttle tiles.
After winning all those military contracts, Corning decided to market Pyroceram for home use beginning in 1957, specifically CorningWare dishes. Corning claims at least CorningWare dish was in nearly every household by 1980. However, CorningWare had one drawback. They are so durable they will last for 1,000 years. By the late 1980s CorningWare sales started to drop because of little to no repeat business. After all, CorningWare pretty much does not break. Period.
By 1998, Corning had stopped making home consumer products and concentrated on communications and aerospace. Corning leased the rights to its entire cookware line to World Kitchen. World Kitchen kept the CorningWare name and replaced Pyroceram with stoneware. Pyroceram is no longer manufactured for cookware.