The Happy Cooker company or Unarco Home Products as it was known was located in Paris Illinois in the 70's. their primary business was stainless steel kitchen items . They added a porcelain enamel plant right next door in the late 70's and were looking to grow the business , when someone came up with the idea of a BBQ . They began to produce a kettle style porcelain enameled BBQ that looked very much like a weber , it was also more affordable and they managed to land a deal to supply Sears, which got Webers attention .Unarco was careful not to straight up just copy Weber , they changed the leg sockets , the lid , vent sizes and other small details but ultimately their design was to close to Webers and a patent infringement lawsuit arose forcing them to cease production immediately . Naturally Weber won and my source seems to remember it was a case of The Happy Cooker being told to not do it again or Weber would if fact prosecute , Anarco agreed and in the early 80' s Unarco relocated to Louisiana never to produce another BBQ . The old Anarco plant in Paris is a super fund cleanup site and many of the employees are gone or relocated to Louisiana when the company did leaving behind a grill with a short and checkered past as a copy cat . My sources include the Paris chamber of commerce , the editor in chief of the Paris area newspaper for over 40 years as well as the current owners of Anarco which is the Franke Company. After 40 plus years memories are vague at best and some folks I spoke with still think that Weber was somehow involved with the Happy Cooker but that was never the case.
As far as The Happy Cooker goes if you have one , well they only lasted a hand full of years my source wasn't sure of the dates only that it was late 70's and by the early 80's Anarco was gone. He said if you could find the date that they relocated you would find the final year or production , he did not know the first year of production exactly . For me it makes them a great part of a Weber collection because in fact Weber was involved , just not in the way many people thought . I for one ( sorry AJ ) will be hanging to on mine because its in such great condition and now has a story. I have an e- mail sent to the former VP of The Happy Cooker division which I hope can shed some light on dating these for future reference .
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