Like movie popcorn . . only at home & healthier

I've tried hot air poppers, the stove top method, and microwave popcorn - all had good points but felt short of being really good, at home popcorn. I was skeptical then when I saw an offer for the WestBend Stir Crazy model, but for $22.49 I figured why not try it.

Hot air poppers are healthy and work great, except that the popcorn tastes stale. Guess that must have something to do with the air part. Stove top methods often burned or created a terrible racket with the pan scraping the stove burner. Microwave types are quick, fairly easy if you have a special "popcorn" button on your microwave (if not, look out for burnt popcorn!), but also expensive and you get really good tasting popcorn (on the unhealthy side) or bland stuff (on the higher end of the healthy scale).

The Stir Crazy is a combo of all the best traits of each. It's simple to use: just add the required amount of oil and popcorn and plug it in. The rod spins round and round as the oil heats. When the kernels begin to pop, the rod's job is to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom. Kids love to watch it start popping and are amazed as it slowly fills the whole top. When it's done, turn the appliance upside down so that the popcorn ends up in the top, and viola! It's now the serving container!

There is a plastic cover on the top where you can put butter and it's supposed to melt and drip down on the popcorn. This was actually a bit of a pain and ended up dripping out before I decided to forget using that. Instead, we bought some special popping corn oil and it also adds the butter flavor. The alternative was to melt the butter on the stove, but the flavored oil does the trick and there's no need. Plus the lack of dripped butter eliminates the soggy popcorn that you inevitably get.

We initially tried a cheap brand and all the kernels popped. It had a funny taste to it, tho, and we wondered if it was the popcorn or the machine. When the stirring rod goes around after a couple of uses, the teflon finish starts to rub off in a circle. To test the theory, we bought the name brand popcorn (Orville's) and used that. Much better!

Clean-up is fairly easy. The bowl can be washed in the sink. The base unit cannot, so it needs to be wiped clean. The cleaning fanatic in me doesn't like this so much because I feel a need to get all the oil off the base. This means I must wipe it about 1/2 a dozen times with a slightly soapy rag and a wet one to remove the soap. Given the results of this unit - fresh tasting, delicious popcorn - this is a task I am willing to deal with vs. going back to previous methods.