The Zoku Quick Pop Maker is a frozen treat maker that uses a pre frozen base unit to quickly make popsicles and the Quick Pops Recipe Book has all the help and recipes for those great tasting treats right at your fingertips.
Ease of Use/Performance: 2.5/5
Convenience/Storage 2/5
Appearance/Design 4/5
How much I enjoy 2.5/5
Total: 2.5/5
The Zoku Single Quick Pop Maker is a simple frozen popsicle or frozen treat maker that uses a frozen base with a single popsicle well to make your treat. The Zoku Pop Maker needs to be frozen to work but it takes about ten minutes to create your very own frozen treat on a plastic stick.
The Zoku Pop Maker comes in a single, double and three pop maker base with accessories like a storage case and chocolate dipping station also available. The Quick Pops Recipe Book is the other item I received and really makes the use of the Quick Pop Maker a treat in itself as it gives a lot of recipes and ideas.
The Single Quick Pop Maker costs about $25, the double maker costs about $37 and the three pop maker costs about $50 while the recipe book costs about $17. They can be found at the Zoku website as well as Amazon and other websites and at Macy’s for a brick and mortar store.
The Quick Pop Makes comes with a base unit, pop sticks, drip shields, and a Super Tool that is used to remove the popsicle form the base after it is frozen. The Quick Pop Maker is simply frozen for a day or so in order to start using it and can make a few quick pops depending on their ingredients.
The Quick Pop Maker can make 2 or 3 Quick Pops that are mostly water based flavored popsicles but for milk or yogurt based you may only get 1 or 2. The ingredients are the key factor for how fast the popsicles freeze and how many you can make before having to refreeze the base unit.
I would have to say that if you’re going to get a Quick Pop Maker buy the recipe book as well to save yourself the trial and error hassles that a prepared book of recipes can help you with. The Zoku Quick Pop Maker is a simple base unit filled with a freezable liquid that is the heart of the pop maker and with its popsicle shaped well you can quickly make treats.
After creating the recipe for your popsicle you simple pour the ingredients in the well and place the stick in till it freezes then pull out the treat. You remove the pop by using the screw on Super Tool that is simply a pry tool that uses a threaded rod and the threads inside the popsickle sticks handles as a pry tool.
Each stick has a threaded nut that is inside the handle but is only about a quarter inch long while the tool also has a threaded rod with a quarter inch of threads. This means when the tool is threaded onto a handle there is a point where the handle is loose once both threads are past each other.
When the Super Tool is screwed onto the popsicle handle while a frozen treat has been made the treat will start to pull out because of the threads. Once the treat has pulled out some you will have to pull the treat out fully using simple hand pressure.
This works well as long as the treat is fully frozen but several times I had difficulty removing the treat or only got parts of the popsicle out of the maker. I think this was mainly due to the ingredients used and the amounts of sugar and other things that did not allow some recipes to freeze as quickly as others or as completely.
A few times I pulled only part of a popsicle out and had to wash out or scrape out the rest using a wooden chop stick but this did not happen all the time. On several recipes I had no problems pulling the popsicle out easily but sometimes I only got the popsicle out part way and had to pull it out which usually broke the treat.
I did get several pops to work and come out of the pop maker easily and as they should but as often as good ones came out I also had ones come apart or not come out. A few times I could not pull the stick out and was afraid of breaking the plastic stick because I was pulling so hard on the stick.
I really am torn between recommending this as a fun kids kitchen gadget and just leaving well enough alone but it also has its problems. After reading several Amazon customers complaints I do feel this is not exactly a very good product and can only recommend it somewhat.
The Zoku Pop Maker does work some of the time and with some recipes better than others if you do follow the recipe book and get the right amounts of ingredients. This is not one of those devices where you will get good results all the time but with some experimenting you can get results that are good enough.
The Zoku Quick Pop Maker does work if you do get the ingredients right and wait long enough for the pop to freeze but the ingredients seem to be the key. I think if you get the right amount of sugar the pop will freeze properly but with other ingredients like yogurt or milk based pops this may not work well.
Several of the yogurt and odd popsicles I tried like cheesecake did not work well and I had pieces that stuck in the pop maker so I had to either wash them out or pry them out with a chop stick. I used a chop sick because I felt it would not scratch the nonstick coating of the pop maker but it would be strong enough to get the pieces out.
The Zoku Quick Pops Recipe Book is a great recipe book for these frozen treats but needs to be followed exactly so that the treats freeze as they should. I think this is the main reason the pops that I had difficulty with was entirely due to the recipe not allowing the pop to freeze fast enough to make the treat easy to pull out.
The recipe book does have a lot of tips and hints to help not only making basic popsicles but for making layered and different type of popsicles like adding fruit and other ingredients. The recipe book can be used as a standalone recipe collection for frozen treats which is probably what I am going to be using it for.
I currently have an orange and cream recipe we have been digging through that was frozen ion a Tupperware container and we dish it up like any sherbet. I also just put in a container of strawberry and cream treats that will be ready for us to enjoy tomorrow but until then we do have some of the orangescicle sherbet to enjoy.
I am not sure I could recommend the Zoku Quick Pop Maker as other than a fun way to make a few popsicles from time to time but the recipe book also available from Zoku sure is worth the recipes.
Zoku Website
