_@_v - who's the idiot that decided toasters needed 'teching up'? you still only get two settings 'underdone' and 'ready for the carbon dating machine'.

Posted by: she-snailie_@_v at May 17, 2007 12:14 AM

I have a VERY similar Toastmaster toaster. HA! It was about $10 at Target.

Mine didn't have that WARNING!! in it (that I saw), but I noticed how trying to pull the lever up doesn't stop the toasting process.

It actually feels like it would break the toaster, so I'm fortunate enough to have noticed before ruining my (pretty darn decent) $10 toaster.

Posted by: bikko at May 17, 2007 02:00 AM

Yeah, I have one of those. Mine has a little "Pop-Tarts" setting on it. I think the toaster is just so cheap that they didn't build in the little breakaway mechanism that allows you to pull the lever up in more expensive toasters. You get what you pay for; I'd prefer it this way. No loss in functionality, as far as I can see, but that note is weirdly worded. Not broken, but kind of odd.

Posted by: =David at May 17, 2007 09:06 AM

I don't consider this "broken". It's just that our expectations, from previous toasters, lead us to expect that we can stop the toaster by pulling up on the lever.

Compare to a DVD player for example - to insert the DVD (the toast, if you will) you have to put it on the tray and push the tray in. But to remove the DVD (and "stop the toaster") you can't just yank the tray out, you have to press the eject button.

So this toaster just has an eject button (but it would be a better design if you could pull up on the lever).

Posted by: BarelyFitz at May 17, 2007 11:05 AM

No, pulling up on the lever is not the best way. I like pressing the button. I don't even have a lever - the toast just goes down when you put it in the front slot, and it comes out when it's done. and to stop, you turn the "light-dark" knob to "extra-extra-ultra-light". I like this.

Posted by: Gabriel J. Smolnycki at May 17, 2007 02:58 PM

I disagree with BarelyFitz - if a product doesn't behave like we expect it to based on our experiences with similar products, then it IS broken - unless the difference is a side-effect of an improvement in usability or function.

Posted by: Sashazur at May 17, 2007 02:59 PM

Another reason this is broken is because it has a broken affordance - a lever is normally something you expect you can push in two directions, not just one. Whenever something includes instructions that contradict its affordances, it's broken (e.g. a door that looks like you have to pull it that has a sign saying "Push", etc.)

Posted by: Sashazur at May 17, 2007 03:05 PM

Oh my, that toaster looks exactly like one we used to own which suddenly caught fire and errupted a huge flame like a volcano. Of course, we were students back then, so we couldn't buy a new toaster. We just cleaned it out and continued to use it, with constant supervision should it decide to explode yet again. From then on, all toasts smelled like burnt plastic.

Posted by: LKM at May 18, 2007 09:33 AM

I can imagine this: people who don't notice the warning (or no warning) they would return the toaster every time to tried to manually pop the toasts and broke it in the process. When the companies starts getting 100's of thousand of those back because the lever doesn't work like they used to on older toasters, they'd have to start doing something as that is a lot more costly than leaving in a $0.05 piece of metal that triggers stop and eject when someone pulls the lever.

Posted by: Uzumaki at May 20, 2007 11:01 AM

"What kind of toaster is 'irreparably damaged' by using the LEVER to remove the toast?"

The Toastmaster model #T2010CTW.

What do I win?

Posted by: henrybowmanaz at May 23, 2007 03:57 AM