Ill fitting toast

The toaster has come a long way from its humble beginnings. Like razor manufacturers who fall over themselves to add 35 blades for the closest³⁵ possible shave ever, toaster makers woo us with technology and features like crumpet shelves, automatic browning detection, or catering for variation in slice thickness.

But two (almost) universal truths still hold for toasters:

1. After a few years of service your toaster will gradually stop toasting unless set on its maximum value or you re-introduce the bread a few times
2. No toaster manufacturer actually tries their product with bread before it goes to market

That second point is surely a mammoth oversight. Custom slices from bloomers I can understand but if I buy a Warburtons Toastie why the heck does an inch stick out of the top of the toaster when the lever is pressed down, and why is the toaster cavity a centimetre too narrow to accept the toast on its long edge?

Surely if designing a product you’d look at the market so your machine could integrate with the widest possible software out there? I appreciate that bread is not uniform and if you were to toast a teacake in an extra-deep cavity that you might struggle to retrieve it, even with the aid of a liftable rack. But if we can send umanned probes to the far reaches of space, we must be able to invent a toaster that can perform its basic function without constant supervision.