What a joy it is to walk into the living room in the morning and see the kids watching something educational, ON THEIR OWN! Not only that, but I actually enjoy sitting with them and watching too because it's so interesting. We store multiple episodes on TiVo, read the descriptions, and decide which products we'd like to learn about. In this day and age we take everything for granted but How It's Made does a great job of taking everyday products and making the story of their creation interesting. I will never take cornflakes for granted now that I know what they go through. Ditto fire extinguishers and Wellingtons. But most important, I absolutely love the fact that my kids would rather watch this than cartoons.

I was wondering how some of the things featured in this series was made. Then I found this series, and learned how they're actually made. Showing how things are made on video is ideal way to learn how it's done. The show keeps it short and sweet - just perfect for us laymen to get the information we need.I can think of at least a dozen episodes of exact items I wanted to learn how they're made, like drill bits, sugar, salt, ham, soy sauce, tofu, rum, needles, gears, magnets, bike chains, injection molds, batteries, and coffee. There's no other series that you can pick up so much information in one place, and the producer did an excellent job of compiling, and presenting the information in an entertaining way. Some episodes gave great overview for the kind of manufacturing that needs to be setup for a new business, which the information would have been difficult to obtain otherwise.I rate this one of the best educational series on television along with Anthony Boudain's "No Reservations". I'm eternally grateful to the producers of this show for producing such an informative show.

For the most part, it's an OK show. I enjoy watching it when the topic is something I'd be interested in. However, my biggest peeve against the show is that most of its episodes can be narrated in two sentences: "A worker puts the raw material into the mould. The machine takes over to complete the process." This is not a show about how things are made. It's a show about how machines mass-produce items with no craft or art involved in the process. I would like to see how something is actually made. For example, I would like to see how a frame is constructed and a membrane of skin or wood strips is lain over it to produce a kayak. I don't want to see "a high-powered press forces the molten plastic pellets into the mould. When it cools, a worker sprays fibreglass onto it and paints it." Yes, many things are mass-produced, but not everything.

This is a well put together show and often has some interesting points which makes the programme worth a watch. The problem comes when it begins to look at items of specialist equipment, which has does not provide any interest for the average viewer. I often find myself only watching half of the programme because the rest of it would be very uninteresting. And more often then not, it only explains part of a process, for example it may explain how they make a plane, but only show a small part, such as the engine. The rest is simply left to the viewers imaginations.Apart from this the programme does contain areas of interest and allows the average person to get an insight into how they make everyday items.