Toasteroid

Wh at is it? Why, it’s an “app-controlled smart image toaster”. Of course it is.

A what now?

Well, you see, it’s a toaster. With an app. You can use it to toast things onto bread.

Wh at kind of th ings can you toast ?

Guru fully intends to use it solely to insult his family with rude toasty messages, but the app enables you to do a lot more. You can put the weather forecast for the day right there on your breakfast toast! You can receive private toast messages from your friends! You can daub toasty pixels in any configuration you like, either with positive or negative toastation!

That sounds rath er silly.

It is. Guru expects the help to bring him his toast pre-jammed and sliced into nice triangles – a hard-to-read toasty jigsaw doesn’t sound like a breakfast must. But the creator of the Toasteroid appears all too aware of its frivolous nature, suggesting different ways you can enjoy toast throughout your day, including “draw and play with your toast” in the morning, and “be proud of your lunchbox” midway through the day.

It also sounds rubbish .

Look, Guru is yet to see the results in person. It might be great. It has the features: it also works as a non-pixelated toaster with the touch of a button on the unit, it has sevenlevel brownness control, and it has an extra-wide slot so it can cope with all sorts of bread. But it only has one slot – while you could conceivably fit two slices of teeny Danish bread in there side by side, there’s no guarantee your favourite loaf is going to be compatible. It’s also, clearly, more gimmick than toaster.

How has it done?

Imagine toast with a thumbs-up emoji on it: a £115,000 funding target smashed with 20 days left to go on the Kickstarter. That’s a lot… of… bread. Crumbs! Etcetera.