Top Star Popcorn Machine - 12oz Stainless-Steel Kettle, Reject Kernel Tray, Warming Light, and Accessories by Great Northern Popcorn (Red and Yellow)

Bought this for my family. It's a sturdy machine, with large capacity 12 ounce popping kettle. Pops quickly and consistently. I've hauled it around to volunteer events and parties and it's always a hit. And a superior popper to those I've seen in local businesses and schools. Cleans easily, and popper is removable.The real trick is to find the balance of oil and flavored sale with your batches. The 12 ounce capacity holds 1.5 cups of popcorn and recommends 8 tablespoons of oil. I use 6 tablespoons and do a combo of canola oil, a little coconut oil and Orville Redenbacher butter flavored oil. Flavacol is the other secret to good tasting popcorn. I use it moderately, and it comes out just like theater popcorn. The warming tray keeps the popcorn warm and can be heated up for days after popping.The only drawback to this machine is its weight-it's pretty heavy. No issue if you have a permanent place for it, and with the weight comes durability. It's been a great investment, and with the price of snacks these days, it's a smart purchase.

7/30/18 UpdateI just wanted to update this as I have been using this for 2 years now and still very happy and still highly recommend. I broke one of the glass doors and the company replied to my email within a day and I was able to order a replacement for about $20. Great service when needed. This broken door was my own fault and nothing against the supplier.7/6/2016This machine is great. Very happy with it. I did a good amount of research on these machines. Happy with my choice. I only used it once so hoping to have this for personal use in a theatre room for a long time.The package arrived in good condition. I also have to say that the machine was VERY WELL packages from the factory for shipment. Attached is some photos. You need to install the doors (simple) then install the kettle (simple). They also provide four plastic covers for the top corners. Assembly took 1 minute.I washed out the inside of the machine and started heating it up and made my first batch. Kettle heats up quickly. I like the size of the kettle as other do not have as much surface area on the bottom to heat and pop the corn. The kettle also seems to be of good heavy construction.I was surprised to also get some "free" accessories like, scope, salt shaker measuring cupS and plastic popcorn boxes (3).I fee that this 12oz popper is a good overall size and pops a good amount of popcorn in a quick time.Recommend to buy.Final note is that the doors needed to be adjusted with a screw to get to close perfectly. So I did have to manually turn a screwdriver but for the price this was acceptable to me.

One of my child care centers favorite machines! Easy to use pops lots of popcorn fast ! Very large well made. Looks just like the one at the movie theater !

I ordered this for my job. I work for a non-profit that does community events. We knew we wanted a popcorn maker to attract people to our table, but didn't know what size. Was a little worried about it being too big, or too heavy, but it works well for us. Takes up about 1/2 of our 6' folding table. It fits fine in my Jeep, my coworker has to lay it down in it's side in her Toyota Camary. She is able to lift and move it on her own. It also fits well in a collapsible wagon, so that's a plus. Clean up is pretty easy too. The pot removes and can easily be hand cleaned, you just wipe down the inside. Combined with their pre-configured popcorn packs make this very easy for our events!

I work a large school concessions stand. We had 2 old Gold Medal machines that both failed. They were so old that our handyman couldn't even find valid part numbers! I was tasked with finding a replacement, quickly, until we could budget for a Gold Medal (which BTW are very expensive). This was one of the few 12oz machines available for immediate delivery but I had some concern about the large price differences between machines without any obvious real why the prices varied so much.Received this item quickly, as promised, and one thing I noticed right away was that even though the kettle size was the same as our old machines- 12oz- the housing is much smaller. I knew the housing was smaller but I didn't realize how small until I saw it in person. Our old machines took the entire footprint of a utility cart and this takes up about half the footprint.Setup was quick. I was very pleased that the kettle is not hardwired because that made cleaning very difficult. This is a plug- in kettle so it can be removed easily for proper cleaning. After hanging the kettle, you can pop the front service door on, the hinged glass doors, and the corner protectors. Finally place the kernel drawer underneath. That's it, you're ready to go. I suggest wiping everything with a damp cloth and light dish soap before complete assembly since you will be serving food directly from the machine. Besides all the items needed for assembly the package also came with a salt shaker, scoop, measuring cups, popcorn bags and reusable boxes.This machine pops 1-1/2 cups of kernels, 1/2 cup popcorn oil, 1 tbsp seasoned salt which of course gives you 12 oz of popped corn. For our typical 1.25oz box we serve it truly filled appx 9 boxes as expected with very little unpopped kernel waste. You could easily pop 2 batches at a time but no more as the housing is too small to do more. In comparison our old machine could hold 4 batches. because this machine pops faster I'm not actually expecting this to be as big of a problem as anticipated.That said, the 2 reasons so far that I took a star off is the small housing. This is more personal preference than design flaw since the dimensions are shown but whereas we could put our hands and box into the housing to fill boxes now we have to bring the scoop outside the housing to fill the box. Not a huge deal but leaves a small pile of inevitable dropped kernels at your feet and the whole filling process feels a little tight. The second reason is that the service door does not stay propped up when you open the glass doors. It's held into place by the glass doors so any time you open the doors it falls open at you and then you have to prop it back up again to close the doors. Another not huge issue but worth noting as a minor annoyance. Side note: in case you think the glass doors won't stay open, push them flush with the housing and they will!Final words: if you are using this for concessions as we are I think you'll be pleased with this machine but if you're a large school like us you may want to consider a larger housing. We might still get a second one next season given the great price and speed and great popped result. But given an endless budget I'd still spring for a model with a larger housing.