AJust wondering everyone's thoughts on if certain cake pans go out of style......I was thinking of getting the pillow cake pans and my daughter was looking at the topsy turvy pans.....do those ever become outdated or are they considered classics?

I would much rather carve a cake for both pillows and topsys - just my opinion (because I have never used the pans)  but I think they are a waste of money......coming from somebody who owns ZERO character pans !

Certain styles definitely are outdated, my son bought me when I first started out (3 years ago) the wilton train pan (the 3D one) and I think I've used it twice, I honestly can't see that I'll use it again. Certain styles stay forever especially where kids cakes are concerned like Mickey, princess, ballet etc but somethings don't bc they are based on the Disney shows of the day. I haven't bought any character pans in the past couple of years & don't think I would. I'd prefer to cut to size. I was thinking of buying the hexagon pans but then I started wondering how often I'd actually use it, where would I store it (?) so I figured it wasn't worth it. I've made a few pillow cakes and just cut to size - then again I live in an apartment so that also plays a part in my thought process.

AI've seen the style of topsy turvy cakes evolve over time, but they're still popular. If they do go out of style, you won't be able to use them for much else. Pillow cakes have been around even longer I think.

For wedding type cakes (most any tiered cake) rounds and squares do NOT go out of style.  Other shapes can depending on where you are located.  Really, that does have a bearing on it:)  Though I'm now retired I haven't see any pillow cakes for at least a couple of yrs now.  As the others said, TT's have revolved some but I doubt I'd ever buy any pans, but sculpt as the others said.   Do NOT waste $$ on character pans!  Those most certainly do go out of style PLUS........the cakes made in them cannot be sold.

Waste of money.  I can't GIVE away all the character pans I collected over the years so they went to the church yard sale.  I just did my first topsey turvey cake and carved the area on top of each cake - easy.  I also have a lot of the expensive pans from England and hardly ever use those either.  Stick with oval, square, rectangle and round and you can't go wrong.

At my local library, character pans can be taken out of the library with a library card!  Not sure how it started, I think someone may have donated their collection.

thanks everyone!  i think i'll stick to what i have (oval, square, round and rectangular)......

I think your local library is doing a great thing Nora, at least pans don't go to waste, we sometimes just need a certain pan design 1 time so it's great that you can just borrow one. I wish I had that in my community :-(

I'm a total beginner and home baker. I love the character pans, but I'm trying to stick with ones I can see something else in.  The first pan I got was the Wilton R2D2 and I've used it as that 3 times in just 3 months (I've got a 9 year old fan in the house), but looking at the outline, I can see a tombstone and a Despicable Me minion with minimal trimming.

There's a big difference in resale value of character pans. R2D2 can go for $50 on EBay. Ziggy frequently goes unsold at only 99 cents plus shipping. A lot of it depends on how popular the characters have remained.

A library in a neighboring town has over 200 pans available to loan. They were donated by multiple individuals. It's fun to borrow a rare one or one I can't see using more than once, but by the time I drive to borrow it and drive to return it, it's $15 of fuel and nearly 2 hours of driving time, so I only do that for special occasions or when I'll be out that direction for some other reason for at least 1 of the 2 trips. There have been requests for my local library to do this and I'm really hoping they will.

I picked up a couple hex pans at a yard sale for cheap, but I still kind of kicked myself when I saw how easy they'd be to cut from circles I already had.

So I guess my short answer is how many times are you likely to use it as is and how many alternate uses can you see for it?

A

That's awesome! Squeeze away!!!