VIDEO: Wallace & Gromit pancake maker revealed
The Happy Egg Co has devised a Wallace & Gromit-style pancake maker, designed to draw attention to its eggs and egg products in the run-up to Shrove Tuesday (12 February).
The Pancake-omatic took a team of four design engineers more than 200 hours to construct, and a further 100 hours to test.
The process starts with the hen laying an egg, which rolls down a ramp, pushes a wooden spoon, which winds up an old-style gramophone.
When the music starts, the egg is dropped into a holder on the spinning record, then swung around and cracked into a bowl containing other pancake ingredients.
The bowl moves down a conveyor belt where the mixture is whisked and then released slowly into a hot pan. The pancake is cooked for 30 seconds, flipped and placed on a plate.
Design engineer Dermot Doyle of Helix design production said: “It’s no mean feat to create a machine that will break an egg, let alone flip a pancake, so this project has been a really exciting challenge.”
A spokeswoman for PR company Mischief PR said the aim was to raise the profile of Happy Eggs through media coverage and through people sharing the video on social media. The story was picked up by The Daily Mail, The Sun and The Metro, while the YouTube video scored over 3,600 hits in its first 24 hours.
The Pancake-omatic will go on display at the Design Museum later this month.