Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker

Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker,Green

Overall Rating:

Retail Price: $39.95

Amazon Price: $36.34

Unlike most of the products we’ve talked about here, the Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker, also known as The Ice Cream Ball, has been getting mixed reviews. Most of them are positive, but there are a few more negatives than there are with the other toys we’ve mentioned.

Here’s the idea behind it.

This ice cream maker is designed to let your kids (and you) have fun while making great tasting homemade ice cream. You add ice and rock salt in one end of the ball and the ice cream mix in the other. Close it up and play with the ball, shake it, roll it, pass it, whatever you want for about 15 minutes. When you are done playing you open it up and out comes great tasting ice cream. Depending on the size you purchased you’ll have about a pint to a quart of soft serve ice cream.

Take it with you when you go camping or on a picnic. Of just use it when you have a barbecue in the yard. No electricity is needed. And when you are finished the ball is easy to clean. It all sounds great, and for most people it is. Especially if you improvise your own ice cream recipes and make your own wonderful flavors. Yum.

As we said however, there are a few complaints. Some said it was too difficult to open. Some said it got too cold to play with (well we are talking about ice cream here). And others said the hard edges of the outer shell could be painful if you play with it too hard. Also many felt it took much longer than the recommended 10 to 15 minutes to get the ice cream hard enough.

It seems like the novelty of the Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker is what makes it so popular. But for some once the novelty wears off, there are better and faster ways to make homemade ice cream. Or perhaps you should just run to the store and buy as much as you need.