A very cheap ice cream machine

To be fair, it's not terribly difficult to use. Keep the bucket in the freezer for a while, mix up the ingredients (a collection of recipes is included), pour them in, and turn it on. And you'll get decent ice cream - except sometimes if you pour the ingredients in while they're a bit warm, it won't freeze it properly.

This is partly due to one design feature that falls into the category of "What were they thinking?" The machine has a 40 minute timer to protect itself from trying to mix completely frozen ice cream. Trouble is, if the ice cream isn't frozen in 40 minutes - and sometimes it isn't - you're out of luck. There is absolutely no way to reset the timer. You have to let it sit for a long period of time, far too long to be useful to continue mixing the ice cream. So if the ice cream fails to freeze while it's mixed, you're going to have to put it into the freezer and have it turn into a badly textured block. This thing needs a reset switch, and there isn't anything that'll do that. Turning it off and back on again won't, and neither will unplugging it and plugging it back in.

Then there's the issue of its geartrain. I haven't taken it apart, but it sounds like the gears are made from very imprecise plastic. This thing makes a horrible racket when it's running, about as loud as a washing machine. I've only had it a couple months, but I figure the lifespan of these gears is probably pretty limited. This thing is cheaply made, and I will not replace it with another Rival ice cream maker when it dies.