Microwave Oven Collectors? 1969 Oven Available

[combo52]

The Litton Meal-In-One MWO

I was working for a Litton dealer in 1978 when these came out and I remember getting a brand new one for my first boyfriends parents for an Christmas gift that year.

 

Unfortunately the quality of Litton appliances was not great even back then compared to other brands like Amana and MWOs coming from Japan.

 

Around 1976 Litton started building 30" electric ranges with a micro-combination oven, it was a great concept but the quality of the basic range was the pits, you name it from cheap plastic knobs to wiring failures, almost everything went wrong.

 

We have the very rare Litton Hi-Low range in the museum kitchen that actually has the combination main lower oven and an additional top MWO above the cook-top, I believe it is the only cooking appliance ever built to have TWO MWOs in one appliance.

 

Litton did them selves in in the mid 80s when they would not negotiate with their workers in Minnesota on a new Union contract. So they moved the factory to South Dakota and went out of business shortly thereafter.

 

John L.

 

[blackstone]

Phil,

Your premonition is correct. I don't have this beast.

My unit originally came from California. Sold it to a very appreciative turquoisedude.

 

[neptunebob]

Was it actually a meal in one?

Seems like the roast would come out tough and not browned. Some foods just have to be cooked in thermal ovens.

 

[leefree]

You'd be surprised

I dived in to early microwave cookery on a quest to, as Amana advertised for their Radarange, "make the greatest cooking discovery since fire." You can make just about anything in a microwave except hard boiled eggs and have it come out indistinguishable from cooking by conventional methods. Breads and cakes, traditional lasagne, beef stew, coffee (yes, proper brewed coffee) even beef roasts will brown properly and cook correctly because of the relatively extended cooking time of 25-30 mins that they require.

BIG CAVEAT: you have to completely rethink the way you cook, modify most processes (i.e. finish some items under the broiler), and acquire the right accessories. If anyone wants to know what accessories Amana EVER made and how they worked, thanks to eBay I've acquired them all over the years!) Getting to the point where your nose isn't in a cookbook or a manual all the time takes total commitment and it might have actually worked if American kitchens hadn't retained all the conventional tech that humans have been cooking with for centuries. Amana went completely down the rabbit hole with their later machines with complicated (for the early 80's) cooking programs that could be keyed through and monitored with temp probes to go from frozen to table - I've tried them a couple of times but they produced mixed results - it was a leap that the technology wasn't quite ready for. Ultimately, it's easier to do what we know when we're hungry and that's how we ended up with oversized, really inefficient water reheaters in our kitchens.

But, if we run out of natural gas and get trapped in a house sandwiched between a hydroelectric dam and a supermarket that only has a microwave - I'm ready!

 

[leefree]

Forgot my point!

I've been on the hunt for and early 70's Tappan microwave. This one listed is a terrific find. Thanks for bringing it to AW!

 

[superocd]

WAIT, there was a SPEED QUEEN-branded MICROWAVE???

Though the name does make sense. Microwaves are primarily for speed cooking. I do know that SQ was owned by McGraw-Edison before being handed off to Raytheon and then Alliance), was Litton a McGraw-Edison company?

Speaking of microwaves, I've got a three year old Whirlpool OTR microwave that will be replaced with a Broan APE130SS hood with 440 whopping CFMs (compared to the anemic CFMs an OTR maintains, probably less than 150), so I will soon need a countertop microwave. I'm thinking about getting a Panasonic. The Kenmores have received bad reviews. I won't touch any of the ones at Walmart or Target. Just about everything else seems to rust out and there are countless reviews about dead control panels and the microwave not heating before the warranty is up.

The Whirlpool I have now works great, it just has a weak vent (and yes, it is most definitely vented outdoors, a straight run of about six feet from the cabinet above through the roof). I just can't put up with the weak exhaust. I'm going to take it to Habitat for Humanity so someone could use it. It will be the cleanest one there because I've never fried anything in the house or let splatters build up inside, lol.

 

[iowabear]

combo52/John -

 

Thanks for the background on Litton.  I had no idea anyone ever made a full-sized oven with a microwave built in!

 

neptunebob -

 

Was it really a Meal-in-One?  I guess so, because its claim to fame was the large size and metal rack so you could pack in several dishes to be microwaved at once.  It also had a temperature probe for roasts so it could be programmed to shut off or change cooking power as the meat progressed.  As leefree suggests, when you loaded several items the cooking times were very long so the meats did brown.

 

It came with a cookbook, I can remember my mother trying a few of the complete meals.  I don't remember them as disasters but after the novelty wore off she eventually returned her old style of cooking and our "Meal-in-One" operated for most of its life without the rack installed...just serving as a way to heat/reheat food as any regular MWO.  Still, it was great marketing for Litton, I'll give them that.

 

I can remember having great fun with it the first couple of months trying out the specialty cookware. 

 

I was the stereotypical GenX latchkey kid so MWO sure saved a lot of energy compared to heating the regular oven for pizza rolls and frozen dinners.  Also interesting to me at the time was all of the new frozen foods in the stores for MWO and even the old brands trying to become MWO friendly. 

 

[ovrphil]

Reply #18 and more

MW get a bad rap if you look at some of aw.org's postings and the web, but I never invested in them for meal cooking. Yet, Litton's marketing and meal-in-one concept in photographs looks very Jetsonian, doesn't it?

I love cookbooks. For some crazy reason, and I admit it was, I went to used bookstores and thrifts a few years ago and found and collected various MW cookbooks, both general and branded. As you said, Jim(and thanks for the Litton YouTube video link, it reminded me how easy it looked to make a meal when you do have to learn a whole new way to cook, really. And I'm not inviting a debate - MW works for some things, sometimes for us and the designs are often (like Amana and this Tappan posted by Blackstone)design eye candy for some of us.

Fred - Thanks, I know Paul and Phil and it went to a good home. I'm going to just hope a fluke find happens for me and ask all I've helped or at least, maybe helped(?) here through the past 4-5 years in finding some things they wanted, to keep an eye out for me and PM me, FB messenger, or just give me a notice to contact you if you find this Tappan model. I'm understanding, many would prefer to keep something like this Tappan.

Not all related to Tappan, but fun to view:

1) The music is soothing, even if the food might not be?



2)An English (Great Britain) narrator introduces MW ovens...what we know now was so new once before:



3)Pennywise - Grampian TV - 1985 - Retro Microwave 500 vs 700 watts MW and a convection in 1985 @ 400 GPB (1,141 GB today or $1536 today)

and there's plenty of others that have been posted in MW threads here at aw.org...

 

[iowabear]

Great videos!

That first Frigidaire video is great!

 

Not only the music, but her look of absolute triumph at 2:30 just makes the whole thing!

 

[philr]

Superocd,

Here's the thread about my Speed Queen microwave oven.

http://www.automaticwasher.org/cgi-bin/TD/TD-VIEWTHREAD.cgi?59249