Nostalgia Classic Countertop Cotton Candy Machine, Retro Vintage Candy Maker Includes 2 Reusable Cones & Scoop, Aqua

Excellent for family use. The media could not be loaded. Works great with floss sugar. Haven’t tried with hard candies yet, pretty sure hard candies would take longer. PROS: easy to use, pretty easy to clean. CONS: only makes a small cone of cotton candy per scoop of floss sugar. Directions say to only use with 1 scoop at a time. Takes a while to make cones for several kids. Definitely not for mass production. Kids will likely have already eaten theirs and will already be asking for more before you have even finished the next cone. TIPS: I have learned that if you raise the cone higher in the air, the cotton candy will appear bigger than if you hold it real close to the spinner. It’s still the same amount, but looks more impressive to little eyes. Also, if you turn your cone too fast, it will flatten the cotton candy too (be more condensed). You should also stop the machine just long enough to put the next scoop of sugar in and turn it right back on to keep it warmed up. If it cools down too much, you’ll have to wait longer for it to work. FYI: I was surprised when a ring of sugar started forming around the rim of the machine. That is actually part of the design and how the sugar turns to floss. It feels wasteful, but it’s just how cotton candy is formed. I only just thought of this, but I bet that hard ring of sugar created each time could probably be reused. 🤔. Do I recommend? Yes. The cons weren’t too big of a deal for us. My kids don’t need too much sugar anyway. They loved it and it was easy. I just had to set a two cone limit for my own sanity. 😁

It worlds greatest! Except the on/off plastic handle came broken off. It worlds greatest! Except the on/off plastic handle came broken off.

Fun. It’s fun. We tried both regular sugar and candies. And we we stunned with how incredibly tasty candy makes it taste. We used German hard candies, and they made the best cotton candy I’ve ever tasted. Regular sugar makes bigger and plumper balls, while candy makes more dense and compact ones.

Works great so far, small batches. Was nervous about the many poor reviews, particularly recent ones, so put it together carefully, read the instructions, and watched some YouTube videos about cotton candy machines. After making our first set of batches, my overall take is it’s a great little unit. I had no trouble getting it going, waited the full 10 minutes for it to heat up before using it, and used candy floss sugar bought separately (unit doesn’t come with any). Spun up into floss in about a minute, and was relatively easy to spin out onto cones (came with the flossing sugar), or a straw / chopstick we had around. We made about 6 ‘batches’ consisting of about a tablespoon of sugar (the max for the unit), and they got eaten very very quickly (faster than I could make them).I set it up outside because of the reviews saying the sugar got sprayed 4 ft in every direction. I did not notice any sugar spraying out of it at all for me; my next batch I will try inside. I did however, find some perhaps 25%-50% of the sugar in the batch fails to make it into the floss, and is flung as small particles onto the walls of the bowl in a ring (where the spinning disk is). I collected it afterward (the pieces snapped off easily) and tried putting a couple big pieces in to re-melt and have less waste. That turned out not to be such a good idea, as the weighting wasn’t distributed evenly for the spinning disk. The solution is to crush the hard candy into little pieces first, so that it can spin out more evenly, which I’ll try next time.I stopped the machine due to the odd rotation that was occurring, and let it cool. The sugar in the head all hardened inside and looked like a fairly nasty mess to clean up. Good news is it’s sugar, so it dissolves in water. After cooling for 20 mins I popped the head off and ran it under hot water and dissolved out all the sugar that had hardened inside. Took a good 10-15 mins to get it all out, so I won’t be in any hurry to re-create that situation. But all in all it’s straightforward to clean and looks like new again.In sum, does what it’s supposed to do (makes delicious cotton candy), is easy to set up, easy to use, and easy to clean. 5 stars. Just know it’s small batches, you may want to make some ahead of time if you have a bunch of kids / people that want to eat it.

Sugar free for my diabetic and post bariatric buddies. Pictured is the one I made with 3 sugar free jolly ranchers (1 at a time like the instructions say). Its smooshed shape is likely because this is my first attempt and I need to practice, but I’m just excited that I get to make sugar free cotton candy at home. Cotton candy is my favorite treat when I need to pull up my inner childish joy, but I couldn’t find sugar free anywhere and didn’t even know if it was possible to make. It is!A word of advice: Believe the instructions when it says to hold the stick HORIZONTALLY. Regardless of what you remember the pros doing at the fair.I like the reusable sticks, but I might buy some paper ones to try as the cotton candy tends to slide off the top of the plastic stick if I tip it while trying to shape it. This is true with both the sugar free jolly ranchers and the floss sugar I bought from Concession Essentials.Also with the sticks I know you’re supposed to hold the smaller of the tapered ends but I don’t have a stand to put them in so I hold the wide end and it lets me put it down on a flat surface (pic #2 – made with 2 scoops, 1 at a time, of regular floss sugar) Pic #3 is the first one we made with 1 scoop of floss sugar and where my son found a creative place to put it down because I hadn’t realized the thing about the tapered ends yet.I love the Nostalgia brand because it comes in my favorite color. I just wish everything they made didn’t say “NOSTALGIA” in huge letters on the front. It’s a bit too on the nose and when you buy more than 1 of their products the word is written all over your kitchen. But still 5 stars for how easy it is to use.Because overall the product worked exactly as it should and it was easy to set up and use once I read the instructions. I haven’t cleaned it yet, enjoying my cotton candy now. But it looks like it won’t be too hard. I think I’m going to collect the little candy crunchies from the side and find something I can make with those. Maybe sprinkle them on the cotton candy to make it sparkle. I don’t know. Excited to try new things!