I know some people have those toasters with the slots on top that pop the toast up, and I remember having a toy one for my play kitchen as a child, but as an adult with a family to feed, I always choose a toaster oven over the pop-up.  My mother had a toaster oven and she would use it for quick meals during the summer when the temperature in our Southern California  house was in the mid nineties.  My mother is well known in our family for her thriftiness and would use the toaster until it absolutely would not toast another piece of bread.  Even when she had to flip the bread over to toast both sides, she kept it.

Here’s a nostalgic piece from the Navasota Examiner for those of us who remember eating toast that had been over cooked in an aging toaster.

I burned the toast this morning and the unfortunate event brought back many memories. The reason I burned the bread to a black crisp was that my toaster oven of about 20 years refused to toast any longer, forcing me to use the oven broiler. One might say the toaster retired. For all those years, the little oven had neatly browned bread, cooked wieners, toasted buns, baked potatoes, cooked tater tots, French fries and chicken nuggets.
I retired it once before, when my children presented me with a new one, but the newer version promptly caught on fire and destroyed itself. One might say it committed suicide. When the new toaster passed away, I dug out the old one and placed it on active duty, sort of like calling up the National Guard.

To read more, click here