Friday, February 13, 2015

Oh, patents! Toy ball ice-cream maker!

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Do your kids love ice-cream? Do they love playing ball? 

If they do… (on both counts), and would rather avoid cranking frozen desserts, then you will all delight in the toy ball ice-cream maker, marketed as the Play & Freeze

Just fill the central container of the ball with frozen dessert ingredients (in the right proportions), and the outer container with ice and rock salt. Then let your kids play with the ball for 20 minutes, during which the ice cream will freeze… Then…enjoy the dessert!

The principle of the toy ball ice cream maker restores the “old fashioned process” of making home-made ice-cream, lost to modern motor-driven appliances and refrigeration, without the tedium and labor of hand cranking. Indeed, this dessert is fun to make, from start to finish!

The patent US5857351 (A) titled Play ball ice-cream maker recites this invention in the most elegant patent style. Beyond process and play, the invention is presented with health and educational benefits. The health benefits recited include the possibility of making ice-cream with healthy low-fat ingredients, devoid of additives and preservatives. The educational benefits invoked are those of reflection on the scientific process of rock salt ice interactions with ingredients, and the details of healthy nutrition, in the fun-filled process of playing ball. 
  
The double compartment of the ball is described succinctly below, in the Abstract for US US5857351 (A), titled Play ball ice-cream maker. A patent drawing of the ball is also included, and above the image of the marketed Play & Freeze ice cream maker.
 A toy ice cream maker being a preferably aluminum can with a lid insertable into a larger container wherein the larger container is encased in a spherical foam jacket. The smaller can has a lid and the larger can has a lid providing that ingredients for a frozen dessert may be inserted into the inner container and a  mixture of rock salt and ice is insertable in the space between the inner and outer can. Another lid, formed integrally with the jacket seals the ice and rock salt in position. After the dessert ingredients have been sealed in the inner container and the rock-salt and ice have been sealed in the cooling container, the device, being a soft ball, is a toy that children delight in rolling around thereby hastening congealing the ingredients to form the dessert. Abstract US5857351