What's the deal with the popcorn button?

My two cents was that there was a lawsuit regarding a popcorn button fire and the popcorn companies wanted no part of the liability that comes with popcorn buttons

I used to have a microwave with only one working button - the potato button. So I had to time everything in potatoes.

So my college friends had a lovely anecdote about my friend who somehow ended up in her dorm with a microwave oven that had nothing but a popcorn button. That's right, it was a popcorn-centric machine, and so the story goes, she discovered she could cook anything, as long as she stood close by, clapping and stomping to satisfy the microphone-based sensor and keep the cook cycle running until she decided that the food was done.

Here are the original patents for the first automatic popcorn ovens: 4870238, 4873409, 4937413 and 4952766. We made both consumer ovens as well as dedicated popcorn ovens for use in a kiosk. They were all sound based. You're welcome! Charles W. McDonald, co-inventor of the automatic popcorn microwave oven.

What I’m hearing is that the most expensive microwaves have a built-in Clapper.

Someone should create a website ranking every microwave’s popcorn button so people can look online to see if theirs is good.

The difference between the casserole, dinner plate, and pasta settings lets the microwave know how to more evenly reheat your food. Casseroles are usually an amorphous, unified, oobleck, amalgam of foodstuffs that tend to heat/reheat at roughly the same rate; so an even heating method is preferrable. Dinner plates tend to have varying reheating rates for each independent item, so a lower and slower process is needed to keep certain items from desiccating, and potentially burning, while others remain cold at their core. And the pasta setting is there purely to make the Italians sad. Love your videos. Keep up the interesting work!

20 years ago I worked at Lowe's and sold microwaves. I remember the vendors coming in and teaching us about their products. I learned that 99% of the microwaves out there just cycle the power on and off for different intervals to get the "power levels." So, 50% power meant that the microwaves magnetron was turning on half the time. However, there were two manufacturers at the time that actually did have the ability to adjust and change the level of the magnetron without cycling it. Whirlpool was one of them. And Whirlpool makes KitchenAid. So likely, your guess is correct. It's running at half power or a preset percentage of power. It was not a feature on all models of course. But, they did have it on their upper echelon series.

When you said “use the popcorn button”, I was about to reheat Thanksgiving leftovers. I said “Why not” and used it to reheat. It somehow made them the perfect temperature. Thanks for telling me to use the popcorn button.

"Why do we even HAVE that lever?!"

I'm impressed that your microwave took from 22nd Jan to 12th Nov to cook one batch of popcorn - the extent to which you craft your videos is something else!

When I figured out how to change the power level of my microwave, it was a game changer for me. No more bowls boiling over when making oatmeal. Perfectly cooked rice. Butted is softened, but not melted.

“Latent Heat of Popcornization”

About 30 years ago there was a microwave that did one thing: make popcorn. It had two buttons: start and stop. It used a sound sensor to determine when to stop. We discovered we could make the microwave stay on indefinitely as long as we clapped quickly, thus expanding its heating repertoire to include soups, leftovers, frozen meals, and so forth. Kind of silly watching us applaud the microwave doing its thing, but at least it worked. Presumably, this sound sensor technology was patented because we couldn't find another microwave with this feature until fairly recently.

3:28 "If you go back in time to when appliances were actually trying to be smart and not just connected to the internet ... " Rekt 😂😂

I have made a habit of only pushing one button on my microwave: "Add 30 sec", which also starts the microwave. If I need to microwave something for 1:30 I just hit it 3 times and walk away. It's quicker than 1-3-0-Start because I don't need to move my finger away or to any other buttons. And it's fewer presses! Even for longer times it's easier to not press individual buttons. But now I want to try my popcorn button. This video may have opened my life to an existence of more than one microwave button.

Impressive to know that at least ONE popcorn company wants you to experiment with the popcorn button

I've never felt more inspired to microwave popcorn in my life. Sadly my microwave does not even have a pppcorn button.

As a "kernels and oil in a bowl with a lid" microwave popcorn enjoyer (specifically usually a silicone one made by KitchenAid I think, meant for popcorn) I am left wondering if the popcorn button works for that situation. Fantastic work as usual, but we who don't use bags for our microwaved popcorn must have answers! There are literally... Hopefully more than just 1 of us!!!

Back at my parent's home I found out through trial and error the exact time to make the perfect popcorn on that microwave. 4 mins and 17 seconds. Sometimes it left a bit too many kernels left, but it was divine. I think microwaves in Brazil have lower power settings because the instruction on popcorn bags over there usually say "3 to 5 minutes", and in the US it's like "1 to 3 minutes"