When did toasters get so big?

OK, this isn't a normal blog post for me. The other day our toaster oven died. We'd had it for almost seventeen years (it was a wedding gift). It turns out that with this particular kind of toaster oven, you're lucky if it lasts two years.
We loved that it had a bracket to mount it under your cupboards -- no wasted counter space. It was great. You put the bread in, pushed down the lever, and in a few minutes the lever popped up to let you know the toast was done. Makes sense, right?

So why do almost all toaster ovens out there have a timer on them rather than a lever?
And the timers on most of them are loud! Kind of a grinding noise that's sure to wake everyone up if you happen to want toast before other people are up. And if you see that the toast is done and you want to stop, you have to turn the timer back to zero and it still stays on for a while. Why can't you just pop the lever up when you see that it's done?

And the biggest reason for this post -- Why are they so big? It's toast. We don't need to bake a pizza in there (there was actually one at Sears that could fit a 12" pizza).
That one was, admittedly, one of the larger ones (but not the biggest!). It just happened to have a 12" pizza pan come along with it.

And another thing -- none of them mount under the cupboards. So not only are they huge, they take their huge-ness and plant it on the counter.

You might ask, "why not just get a regular toaster?" Well, you see, once you have a toaster oven, you get kind of spoiled by it. Kind of like having a garbage disposal. It's hard to go back. We reheat leftovers in there, warm up those frozen french bread pizzas (yes, I see the irony), toast waffles that we've frozen after making too many (we actually use a waffle iron -- something our kids' friends have never seen before). Our youngest needs his "Tommy Burgers" when we're grilling outside (he prefers them with only cheese (no meat) and toasted -- in a toaster oven! Not on the grill).

So, anyway, a toaster (oven) is kind of a necessity at our house so after Lynn looked online for a replacement (they don't make them, anymore), we headed out to find a new toaster. We were successful, but we had to make a bunch of compromises.

It wasn't the smallest, but it didn't have a timer. It actually has a dial that goes from "light" to "dark" -- what a concept. Instead of a lever to push down, there's an electronic button to start toasting, but I can live with that. There's another button to stop it mid-way through if you see that you're about to have a high-carbon breakfast. And there's even a dial with temperatures like "350" and "400" on it so we know where to set it for heating up frozen french bread pizzas. It broils, bakes (a pie, even -- it says so right on the box!), and comes with an instruction manual with many "mouth-watering" recipes.

I know, I just took the time to blog about a toaster, but it feels good to get that off my chest. I'm tired of cereal.