I just bought the 8 oz great northern for $170 at walmart, along with 40 8oz bags for $60. I blame this thread. Guys...stop giving me great ideas... Now tell me which margarita machine and bouncy house I should get please.

So my popcorn machine spits out the kernels when I toss everything in and start the stirrer. Am I doing it wrong? Do I like wait for the shit to get hot first? It seriously spits out a ton of kernels when it starts popping, or is that normal?

On another note, I picked up a shaved ice machine from gold medal, it is awesome and does normal ice into snow. Highly recommend only getting this quality and above, for shaved ice it really makes a difference and not having to make ice in buckets is cool too.

A word of warning, do not leave popcorn or butter or anything liquid on the roof of the machine, on the gears for the stirrer, or on the screws on the roof. I am getting a lot of my great northern popper replaced for free by the company because it rusted. The roof rusts, the gears rust and the screws rust all on the inside ceiling. If you clean religiously after use you may get some good mileage out of the machine, but if you do not the parts will all rust and the machine will become unusable extremely quickly.
To reiterate, the ceiling, gears and screws on the inside roof of the popper are NOT made of stainless or rust-resistant material and there are no upgrade parts available. Clean religiously or lose your machine. If it happened already, great northern may replace the parts (they did for me, my popper was bought in April of this year).

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I emailed sales at greatnorthernpopcorn and they were extremely easy to deal with and very responsive. The unfortunate conclusion is that this popper is lower quality than I wanted, with no upgrade available, so I am gonna fix it and bathe the thing in oil and live with my sorrow for a while before I bite the bullet and sell the poc and buy a better model from a more expensive and established company.

Buddy, it's not going to last you 4 months, years is a pipe dream. They look the same but are made of rusting or inappropriate materials. Mine lasted a little over a month and I am debating whether to salvage it after replacing the entire roof (at great northern's sole expense) or to try the oil coat method. Maybe someone would give me over a hundred bucks, which is honestly more than the machine is worth. For food materials it can be inferior and then there is just straight inappropriately made crap. Damn it all if great northern didn't manufacture some crap.