1936 Popmaticorn 5 Cent Vendor #2022

Click on the thumbnail to change the picture

Wyandot bought this 1936 Popmaticorn from Arnold Levin of Chicago, Illinois, along with another air pop type popcorn vending machine.

When Wyandot received this machine it was like new and obviously had been used very little. In fact, most of these types of vendor machines were used only a short time. There are two reasons for their short life. The first reason was the customer did not like the delay involved in waiting for his corn to pop, and the second reason was that the oil in which the corn was popped often became rancid after several days or weeks of repeated heatings. Because of these two faults, the Popmatic Manufacturing Company of Kansas City was believed to have gone out of business late in the war or shortly after.

This machine was designed so that when the customer inserted a nickel, popcorn dropped into a wire basket which then lowered into a heated oil container until the corn popped and, in turn, the popcorn was lifted back out of the oil and dumped into the bag chute. The entire process took three to five minutes depending on whether the machine was heated up or not.