Meet The Futuristic '60s Oven Model Featured On 'Bewitched'

The television show "Bewitched" ran for 254 episodes between 1964 to 1972, but continued to cast a spell on generations of viewers long after the witch had twitched her nose for the last time. The story tracks the life of Samantha, a witch who marries a mortal man, and struggles between wanting to lead a normal life and using magic to make things easier. While cooking like a normal human was one of the challenges she faced, at least she had one of the best-equipped kitchens of the time to fall back upon. It included a futuristic oven: a 1960s model of the Frigidaire Flair.

The unit looked magical enough to fit right into a witch's kitchen. One of its most eye-catching features was the slide-out stovetop with four burners, though the oven door itself was extremely cool as well, folding upward instead of swinging out like gullwing doors on an overpowered sports car. The Frigidaire Flair also had a control panel from the future. With temperature control (using knobs with the cool labels like "Infinite Heat" and "Speed Heat"), built-in timers, and automated cooking functions, this oven was way ahead of its time.

The cutting-edge oven was not an outlier. There are a whole bunch of vintage kitchen gadgets that no one remembers anymore. The 1960s were, after all, a decade of innovation, and the Frigidaire Flair sat somewhere between the truly pathbreaking (like putting man on the moon) and the utterly bizarre (we're talking experiments with tequila-powered cars).

The Frigidaire Flair wasn't a unit that set out to be cool. Instead, every eye-catching detail is designed with the user in mind. As far as ads for vintage appliances go, the one for the Frigidaire Flair is fairly impressive. "The new Flair Range by Frigidaire modernizes your kitchen without remodeling," an advertisement reads, adding that it "looks built-in, but you can install it in minutes." This was thanks to the fact that the oven came in two widths, 40 inches or 30 inches, so it could simply replace an existing range. 

The oven was set at eye-level with a see-through door, so cooks could keep an eye on what was cooking. The advertisement also references a "heat-minder" which "makes every utensil automatic, yet fast." The genius behind these ideas was Jayne van Alstyne, an industrial designer who was hired as part of GM's Damsels of Design, a cross between a PR exercise and a push toward more female-friendly design. Van Alstyne went on to head Frigidaire, working on the incredibly far-sighted "Kitchen Of Tomorrow" project.

It should come as no surprise that the Frigidaire Flair has an extremely active fanbase even today. There are fully functional units for sale online that would fit right into the retro kitchen of your dreams. Meanwhile, "Fans of the Frigidaire Flair" is a Facebook group with nearly 18,000 members. According to Brian Whittington, the group's founder, the Flair was a constant reminder of a time when appliances were built to last. "You'd be lucky to get five to 10 years out of a modern stove these days," Whittington told Saveur. "They don't make 'em like this anymore."