(Why) Won't It Blend?!

Did you know you can spend $500 on a blender? A fucking blender. Here is a kitchen appliance that does ONE THING, blend - it should anyway, having such a short job description. Even if you spent that $500, I would be surprised if even the Vitamix could do its job properly. By proper I mean that it should bust it out - 30 seconds or less. By proper I mean if you make a smoothie it makes it smooth. No chunks. They don't call it a fucking chunkie for a reason, okay? A blender should blend. Proper blending. Is that too much to ask?

Incredibly, I have purchased three blenders in the past year. With the first two, I ended up with the same model blender, the $25 Oster 6694 (similar model). The first one I had to bequeath to my ex-roommate when we went our separate ways. When this particular blender made a smoothie, though, it came out smooth. Smooth! Granted, you had to have the perfect ingredient consistency, or else the thicker part of the mixture would get stuck above a small reservoir of liquid below, and the blades would just go and go - doing nothing whatsoever. I attributed this problem to the tapered shape of the pitcher, but a little shake (with the blender off, of course) seemed to do the trick. The design of the blades - however subtle compared to other blenders - quite simply pulverized ice and frozen fruit. Add to that the all-metal drive train and a glass pitcher, and you've got a damn good unit for the money.

But the motor was some cheap Chinese replica of a motor that would actually get the job done, were it not built as cheaply as possible by child labor. I found this out the hard way when I bought the second one to replace the first. The motor was a pathetic wimpy piece of shit right out of the box. It had a ghost high-low transmission that would vibrate, strain and stutter under even the easiest workload. To get the speeds to work at the proper speed I had to start at full power and then come down in power, which destroyed the delicacy of some recipes. Finally, one day, the excess vibration rattled the thing off the counter and the glass jar smashed on the ground. It made an unbelievable mess, and I vowed to not get suckered into Oster's veritable Russian roulette of quality again.

My third and current blender is the $35 Black and Decker Cyclone. This thing is a real POS. The Oster is just a replica piece of shit, this is the real deal! The motor is the only thing worth shit on the Cyclone, and even that isn't all that great. Best thing about it is it doesn't explode when I'm running the thing for 5 fucking minutes straight trying to get all the fruit chunks blended. You see, the shape of the pitcher creates pockets of liquid underneath suspended half-blended muck. Every. Fucking. Time. The blade shape doesn't do a good job blending any food ingredient known to mankind. I mean, this thing can't blend fucking ICE CREAM into a smoothie to save it's life. Pulse. Pulse. Pulse, run for a minute, pulse, pulse, pulse. Repeat until contemplating suicide. Repeat again. Pour out the half-mixture into a glass, pour back in and start all over again. Run for several minutes, or just give in to the fact that your drink will not be blended no matter what you do. Get ready to chew your chunkie. Were it not for the fact that I DO NOT want to buy another blender in the near future, this thing would have been put out of my misery immediately after purchase: with a trip to my private rifle range.

Another thing about blenders, the names of the different speeds, for the most part, are just ridiculous. Rare is the blender that has a logical speed indicator system, such as, I don't know, NUMBERS?? Instead they have to come up with 14 synonyms for blend. Jesus fucking Christ. A convenient example can be read right off of my Cyclone blender. In order the exact speeds are: Stir, Aerate, Puree, Chop, Blend, Clean, Grate, Grind, Liquify, and Smoothie. Are you fucking kidding me? GRIND!? What about crush, shred, mince, beat, whip and cream? What about masticate? Pulverize?! Pulpify!!! Good Lord. Numbers would be just fine. Am I supposed to believe you simply cannot grate something on the grind setting? Fucking ridiculous. Who ever heard of a blender beating, grinding, grating, mincing or shredding anyway? Blenders can't do any of that, let alone blend.

If I can get the Cyclone POS to break (God please if only that fucking motor would die!) then I'll have to buy another blender. I'm a big fan of multiple speeds and glass jars. As far as I know, even the Blendtec - star of the Will It Blend meme - has only Lexan (polycarbonate) pitchers. Which is a shame because Lexan scratches and harbors bacteria, and also is suspected of leeching PBA's. Gross! Waring Pro has a one speed blender that reportedly kicks ass, but the pitcher is small and is stainless - cool, but not see through. And the one speed is a deal-killer for me, so the glass models are out. There are mid-priced blenders like the Cuisinart, but these are usually just sheep in wolves clothing: you pay double for the name and get a stylized version of a piece of shit.

Will even the $350 - $500 "professional" blenders give hope for a good blend? The only experience I have with these is at Keva Juice, where they use Vitamix brand blenders. I have noticed that if the bananas are green, it throws off the consistency/ratio, and even the top of the line industrial Vitamix has to be run through two cycles to get a good blend.

At this point, considering the five minutes until not blended performance I'm getting now, the $500 two short cycles of the Vitamix sounds pretty fucking tempting.

There is no price you can put on the frustration of a whole year of using shitbox blenders.