Behold the apex of human technological achievement...
I did briefly consider writing a longer piece dealing with this wonder of the modern (meaning "1971") world, and its significance in terms of consumer capitalism's twin tenets of planned obsolescence and creating demand for unnecessary products, but what more could I really add that isn't right there in the advertisement?
It's a toaster, only instead of cooking bread-related items, it cooks meat. Not Pop Tarts, but porterhouses. Not bagels, but bacon. Not scones, but sirloin. To reiterate, it is a toaster designed to cook animal flesh -- in short, a meat toaster.
That the shell-shocked consumers of the early 1970's failed to embrace the manifest greatness of a device that utilized the costly inefficiency of electric heating coils to perform in three hours what would otherwise be a twenty minute task with a conventional oven does not surprise me. Very rarely (no pun intended) is a prophet appreciated by his contemporaries, especially when he seems likely to cause accidental household fires (or is fundamentally incapable of accommodating sliced onions, mushrooms, or peppers within his sizzling, juicy message).
The Toasters - Fire in My Soul (from Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down, 1997) - Sadly, a cool blast of ska is no substitute for a CO2-based flame suppression device.
The Meteors - Meat Is Meat (from Monkey's Breath, 1985) - From the musical meat locker comes this raw slab of 100% USDA certified psychobilly. Remember: The OTMAPP seal is a guarantee of eternal freshness.
Richard and Robert Sherman - Music To Buy Toasters By (from Retro Shopping Vol. 1, 2006) - How they rocked it out in Caldor's home appliance aisle back in the day. Muzak version of "Mahogany" not included.
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