no.81 - The Toaster

The toaster's ubiquity is in direct contrast to its lack of versatility. Everyone lives in fear that this ridiculously simple device is going to burst into flames if it is left plugged in. Why should this be so? All it does is make sliced bread crispy.

Growing up, my mother always kept the toaster unplugged. Now so do I. I suspect there is a good chance you do to.

Why can't we trust them? We don't fear the other things that warm our food and they are all, on the surface, much more dangerous. My oven is snaked with pipes filled with toxic, flammable gas, but I don't shut off the main every time I finish cooking a lasagna. My microwave heats things up molecule by molecule with tiny mysterious waves of heat energy. It has to be ten times as complicated as my toaster, but nobody unplugs the microwave.

I would like to dismiss, as superstition, the toaster's reputation as hate and spark-filled monsters waiting to kill us all. It sounds alarmist and crazy to think a device should be so dangerous when it only serves to make bread crusty. More often than not, it will not even accept a bagel! It sounds like a story was cooked up in old-timey-times when the toaster was a newfangled marvel whose inflammability was part of the cost of being on the cutting edge.

But it isn't an old-timey wives tale.

Just last year, GE caused 140 fires with a single toaster model and ended up recalling 210,000 of the incendiary devices. Hamilton Beach recalled nearly half a million. That's just the last twelve months! These are huge companies who have been making toasters for probably longer than you have been alive!

How can we have come so far with our technology yet we cannot safely warm our bread? Why is the toaster so dangerous?

All the toaster does is make sliced bread crispy... and burn down homes.