Customer Ratings & Reviews

I bought it for my wife, who enjoys popcorn and was cooking the popcorn with oil in a pot. This popper makes the popcorn a little bit healthier however it is more noisier when she pops the popcorn.

great machine for healthy popping. works really good and is easy to work.

I currently own a Poplite popcorn maker. If you go online you will find this is the highest rated air heated popcorn maker on the internet. However the Poplite doesn't have an on/off switch and I ventured to look for one that did. My theory was how different can air heated poppers be? Well the Poplite has a built in fan that blows through a metal mesh. The Nostalgic has a rotating metal fan base. I believe these design differences has a lot to do with the difference between these product's performances. So often turning on a popcorn maker makes my kids squeal with delight because it usually means were getting ready to watch a movie and have some family fun. So the sleek candy red exterior of the Nostalgic really recalls the whole theater experience which often is hard to create at home. The Nostalgic Hot Air Popper has an on/off switch which none of the sites I looked it up would confirm. Once I got it home I read the directions, filled the cap as directed, and let it rip. Some reviews mentioned the Nostalgic can make a mess so I butted my oval shaped bowl sideways rather than the short end like I do with the Poplite. Well the first thing the Nostalgic did was vomit out handful of un-popped kernels into the bowl. Then in proceeded to fill my bowl about a third of the way full. another hand full of un-popped kernels remained in the maker. Now some have mentioned Orville Redenbacher's popcorn could be the cause for un-popped kernels and that was the brand I was using; Jiffy Pop was mentioned as the preferred popcorn brand. However my Poplite popcorn maker doesn't have this issue with Orville so I'm suggesting the type of kernel shouldn't be taken into account here. I really wanted to give Nostalgic another chance because the 50's era design looks so cool when compared to the weird looking Poplite model. So my second attempt I gave the Nostalgic 2 minutes warm up time while at the same time immediately started my Poplite with no lead time. The result was the same. Poplite had about 8 to 12 kernels un-popped, made less a mess when entering the bowl, and was about a minute faster to fill the bowl entirely. The Nostalgic once again spat out a handful of un-popped kernels (a little less this time) and took longer to fill the bowl. Since the exit area is flush with the bowl I was surprised to see it still making a mess. Once again the Nostalgic only filled a third of the same sized bowl, so I let it run an extra minute to make sure I gave them equal chance to pop every remaining kernel. After a minute there was still a handful of un-popped kernels left in the base of the Nostalgic whereas the Poplite had like 3. The Poplite has a high chute that fills the bowl so fast sometimes you get stray popped corn bouncing off the floor, the Nostalgic on the other hand has midlevel and erratic exit area so it's just shooting popped corn in all directions as it exits. Also the type of plastic used for the Nostalgic tends to create a build up of static electricity that clings to Styrofoam and the popcorn shells that are very difficult to get off. I'm not sure if it's fair to compare Nostalgic to Poplite, but I do think it's important to point out there are actual examples of popcorn makers out there offering significantly better performance. If looks are more important than performance than I would say give Nostalgic a try, but if you want your popcorn quick with less waste and less mess then Poplite is the only one I can say with confidence is worth spending your money on. Speaking of money, I probably should have mentioned you can get a Poplite at half the price of the Nostalgic. For me, that's worth the hassle of not having an on/off switch.

Movie night made. Small enough to easily store. Great!

Burns the popcorn, lower capacity than our current. Was so excited to get this because it looked like it would be less messy than our current trusty air popper. So disappointing.

I was not making popcorn for a as Super bowl party but popped sorghum. Mom's machine broke and this was the only one in a nearby store. It has been used weekly until yesterday when a red ring inside the unit fell off and melted. Not all machines are made for sorghum so I am going back to the Crazy popper that lasted longer. Will see if this unit has a replacement part to keep it out of a landfill.

Ever since purchasing one of these Retro Popcorn Makers, we have been struggling to make it work efficiently. For every measuring cup full of seeds we put in (6T), we consistently get about 2/3 seeds back out - only about 1.5c popped popcorn for every full measuring cup. I've done some experiments using different popcorn types, warm up times, etc... measured with supplied cup, measured out the tablespoons, and also by weight and all trials yielded the same result - approximately 66% of the kernels came out un-popped. I've never had this much trouble with my $9 generic popper from walmart. The only way I can seem to get it to work without wasting a lot of seeds and money is to do 5-10 seeds at a time so I can throw them back in as they fly out unpopped.

I am not sure how this product made it to the market. It must have been tested, and with the way it operates, I cannot understand how it went into production. First, it does pop pop-corn with hot air. However, over 2/3 of the kernels are carried out "un-popped" with the ones that get popped. And, shot all over the place. I had a large bowl under the popper, and these kernels were bouncing and flying all over - the counter, floor etc. The ones I could recover, I put back in popper thinking a small amount would do better, and the same thing occurred....kernels everywhere, Finally finished off by doing stove popping. It will be returned

Used ours for the first time tonight. The popper is loud and doesn't pop half of the kernels. Don't waste your money on this popper. Try another one.

I purchased my popper in June 2011. It worked great at first, but as time progressed, it began shooting out more unpopped kernels than popped ones. In fact, when I finally decided to give up on it, it only popped about 20% of the kernels I put in. That is unacceptable!

We just purchased the popcorn popper so that we can get away from the microwave popcorn. We decided to try this machine without seeing any of the reviews. As we followed the instructions to make certain we get the most output of popcorn, we noticed that the machine was warming up fine. But, when we put in the popcorn kernels, there were only a few popped pieces that came out of the machine. We dumped the unpopped kernels and noticed that they were "cooked" and would not pop. We tried it again, and we got a handful of popcorn. Very disappointed in this machine. We are heading over to Best Buy to return this item. Buyer beware!

It was easy to set up and worked the the first time I used it but the second time it totally died on me it popped one kernel and completely stopped working and hasn't worked since then