Commercial cotton candy machines? I've run them, disassembled them, cleaned them, and patronized them. I've never thought a home unit could do more than produce a token puff. The kind (and by kind I mean evil) people at Sur La Table invited me to play around with one of their units. Dude. DUDE! Look at that photo! I used half a tablespoon of sugar! I totally bought it. I also bought a jar of classic pink vanilla spinning sugar by Hammonds. At $9 for a small jar it's 32 cents a serving. The floss sugar Gold Medal puts out is less than 11. On the other hand, you have to store that sugar nice and dry until you've eaten 90 odd sticks of cotton candy. It seems sensible to pay a little more to eat a little less.
I've been playing with the machine a few days running. It's quick to clean and much more fun than most kitchen toys. A cup of table sugar mixed with 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon made a delicious cotton candy but only produced half the fluff of sugar alone. When the flavor mix gets too heavy the sugar builds up in crisp little sticks on the side of the bowl. A good person would crunch it up and respin it, but I have to be honest. I just eat the cinnamon shards outright. (Waring suggests mixing Kool Aid with table sugar. Um. No. Super nasty.) I think later this week I'll mix up a cocoa / sugar base or a ginger / sugar base for some other interesting flavors. In the meantime, there is nothing wrong with vanilla. Nothing at all. (If you're going to throw a carnival in your kitchen I suggest starting with a reversed chopstick. Those paper cones aren't meant for home units. They only pack them in because you've been programmed to think cotton candy belongs there.)
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