To fully appreciate our Original Popcorn Popper is to understand the history behind this clever invention. According to research, the earliest recorded popcornpopper was found on Peru’s northeastern coast, dating back to a time before the Incas, a popular Native American people, around 300 A.D. Basically, it was a shallow vessel with a small hole on top along with a handle for safely holding open an open fire, as a campfire would require. In fact, early 17th century American colonists popped corn using an item made of a metal sheet in the shape of a cylinder with a small handle attached. This nostalgia popcorn popper was rotated by the fire on a stick.

Recorded history of this nostalgic popcorn popper dates back to more than 5,000 years, Unlike that era, popping corn has become a much easier, quicker, and more convenient task whereby our very own popcornpopper is able to be used almost anywhere, anytime, anyplace. An old-fashioned way to pop corn was by heating sand in a fire and stirring in popcorn kernels on sizzling hot, smooth stones gently tended over a ferocious campfire. As the popcorn spun off in many directions, campers, for instance, would do their very best to catch the popcorn, the reward being able to savor it.

In 1612, French explorers of the New World, particularly in the Great Lakes region, including Lake Superior, told a story describing the use of popcorn by the Iroquois Nation, a popular Native American tribe in that region during that era. Oral tradition notes that the Iroquois popped popcorn in pottery heated by sand. Their meals consisted of popcorn soup and popcorn beer which is still made today… a clever invention, indeed!

Felix de Azara, an 18th century explorer of Paraguay, discussed a particular type of popcorn with kernels on the tassel, which when “…boiled in fat or oil, the grains burst without becoming detached, and there results a superb bouquet fit to adorn a lady’s hair at night without anyone knowing what it was. I have often eaten these burst grains and found them very good.”

All kinds of basic nostalgia popcorn poppers were coming into their own. Many were small-meshed baskets with a metal handle. Some poppers measured up to eight feet across for bigger amounts. The Papago people of Arizona, another Native American tribe, still uses the clay pots up to eight feet wide as they have purposely made for thousands of years…also according to oral tradition. These pots, called ‘ollas’, the Papago’s word for such items, can be dated back 1,600 years. They were not only discovered throughout Arizona, but parts of Latin America including Mexico.

According to Chief Whirling Thunder, a 20th century Winnebago chief in Illinois, his tribe has popped popcorn right on the cob by forcing a sharp stick through it and holding it over the fire. Also, he said the ear of the corn “should not be longer than the distance between the floating ribs on each side of the person eating it.”

Jacob Bromwell, inventor and researcher, found the history of the popcorn popper most interesting. His study of the various Native American people was the ‘spark’ that led to his invention of the Original Popcorn Popper which is still available almost 200 years later! In addition to simply enjoying popping corn over an open fire, we invite and encourage you to think back to a time when such poppers were invented. This would certainly make for good conversation. Having studied the benefits of other companies’ popcorn poppers, we are confident Bromwell’s popcornpopper is the finest masterpiece of its kind to which we know you will agree!